


The Hanging Tree

by Antiquity



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, M/M, Mission Fic, Off-World, Past Character Death, Pining, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sex, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 22:57:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16564736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiquity/pseuds/Antiquity
Summary: Bruce breathed carefully too, and Dick recognised the rhythm for clear-headedness. “The League is a battering ram when I need a lock pick,” he conceded. “It’s a covert mission, an investigation into illicit black market dealings on an alien planet of which we have no first-hand knowledge, and Superman wants Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and Green Arrow to accompany me. The penalty for incorrectly trading legal thafalstron is ten years’ jail time; smuggling justifies life imprisonment. We don’t even have a clear-cut system of translation, and the League thinks we can just walk in and escape detection.”A mission in space should be just what Dick needed to shake away the cobwebs and make some sense of his life a year after Bruce miraculously returned from his presumed death. So what if their translators work 75% of the time and there's a life sentence if they get discovered. What could possibly go wrong?





	The Hanging Tree

**Author's Note:**

> Goodness. This fic should not have taken as long as it did, and it transmuted itself several times - it's definitely not what it started out as. But I'm so glad it's finished, 18 months after I said it would be brief thing (hahahahanope), and I really hope you'll enjoy it! 
> 
> It was inspired partly by the court episodes of Young Justice's season 2, by the last scenes in The A-Team (2010), and by rainjoy's incredible FMA fic Quicksand, so much more poignant that I could ever hope to be. The fic also has a healthy dose of Star Trek, a dollop of Voltron: Legendary Defender, and a dash of Star Wars whilst ignoring most of the comic happenings after Bruce's return from his year being dead/in the time stream because I have no idea what goes on in pretty much any comic ever. Maybe I should have tagged for Space Opera, who knows. Lastly, adayofjoy is mostly responsible for me getting the fic finished this year by being a terrible human being and actually supporting and encouraging me tirelessly throughout it. Honestly. <3 <3 <3

Nightwing was tying up loose ends, literally as well as figuratively, in one of the Blüdhaven dock warehouses when his earpiece chirped an alert. Whatever adrenalin was left over from the earlier fight kicked back in, but his hands remained steady.

“Fortunately for you,” Nightwing told the unconscious smuggler he was zip-tying to one of the warehouse’s girder supports, “I’m in a good mood. Stay here, won’t you?” he added, patting the ringleader’s slumped head on his way up to the catwalk. “The cops are on their way. Thanks so much.”

A few of his favourite manoeuvres later, which were wasted on his unconscious, unappreciative audience, Nightwing reached the roof and took a moment to stretch and eavesdrop on the police band before signalling his acknowledgement of the alert. He’d wrapped up earlier than he’d expected, and wondered as he set off on a midnight race across silent rooftops if he should wonder at the timing of the visit. If Nightwing were in a worse temper he might, but he wasn’t, and truthfully he’d come to terms with the fact that though he was independent he was not unobserved. Besides, anything was better than being so utterly _alone_ –

Nightwing threw himself backwards off the lopsided scaffolding encasing the city hall’s weather vane and grimaced as his uneven landing nearly unseated a wobbly chimney stack. A year on from that year of soul-rending grief and still a double backflip couldn’t clear his head entirely. Put it away, push it to the back of his mind; he was in no mood to dig up old, unhealed wounds and pick at the scabs until they bled once more.

Anyway, the alert was a formal request to enter his city, and no vigilante liked to appear anything less than composed in front of a visitor. Nightwing reached the outskirts of Blüdhaven half-an-hour later and clipped his grapple gun to his belt as he touched down by the abandoned station’s mangled clock. With one last survey to make sure the deserted train yard remained deserted, he pried the cracked casing open and slipped behind the clock’s fractured face.

“Well, stranger, what brings you to my neck of the woods at this time of night?”

Batman – real, here, solid and _alive_ – turned from watching the surveillance footage of the clock tower’s surroundings and tilted his head slightly in response to Nightwing’s grin. “Can’t an old vigilante drop by every now and then to say hello?”

Nightwing peered exaggeratedly around the tiny room, long stripped of the clock’s mechanics and now housing only a tiny table and some spare equipment hidden in caches under the floorboards. “Where’s this old vigilante then?”

“Hrn,” said Batman, but the tiny curve at the corner of his lips gave him away.

“So, not that I don’t believe you,” Nightwing said, perching on the edge of the table and folding his arms, “but I know for a fact you’ve had Robin, Red Robin and Oracle running down leads on Black Mask’s newest drug cartel for the last three days. Robin was Unimpressed with a capital U when I saw him yesterday. Don’t tell me the Batman is suddenly taking tea breaks.”

“Alright, I won’t,” Batman replied, and Nightwing was startled into a laugh, leaning back on his hands. He’d missed it, this elusive teasing tone, missed it more than he would let himself know. He didn’t doubt that there was a mission briefing behind this somewhere, but for now it was alright to let it sit.

“If it’s a tea break you’re after, boss,” he said, smile still clinging to his voice, “I don’t think much of your taste in locales.”

Batman looked at him and Nightwing looked back, body loose and languid on his home turf, and a moment later Batman nodded. “Lead the way.”

 _Like you don’t know it backward and blindfolded_ , Nightwing thought, but he appreciated it all the same.

* * *

They landed on the roof of the building next door and wound their way through the maze of titanium tubing to where the ventilation system overhung its own roof and abutted Nightwing’s building. A press of a handprint and a retinal scan later, both he and Batman stepped into the huge pipe and out the other side into a room which could have been a bomb shelter if it weren’t five floors up and technically labelled as a walk-in closet.

It still fulfilled that purpose, just in a way that made it armoury and med bay too. Nightwing stripped off his uniform and stepped into sweatpants and an old hoodie; Batman simply undid his cape, took off his gloves, and pulled back his cowl.

“Did you want tea anyway?” Dick asked, wandering into the kitchen.

“Oolong, if you have it,” Bruce replied, and Dick scoffed, reaching for the leaves.

“Who do you think you’re talking to? Jason? Of course I have it.”

He busied himself with the kettle and waited for Bruce to situate himself at the counter. “Work laptop’s there,” he said, indicating it with a jerk of his chin. “Do you want the Wi-Fi password?” He met Bruce’s dry look with a grin and turned back to the tea, counting down in his head.

“Hnn,” was the only concession. “New algorithm.”

Dick bit his lip to try and cage the grin, but gave up when the soft tap of keys filled the kitchen for longer than he had expected. “Having trouble with the password?” he asked smugly a minute later, carrying the mugs over to the bench and propping his hip next to where Bruce was working.

“Only if little birds keep cheeping,” Bruce retorted as he inserted the final string of code. “A sophisticated platform.”

“I haven’t set Tim on it yet, but it’ll do,” Dick grinned, silencing the alert on his phone that someone had hacked his laptop as he sat down next to Bruce and handed him his mug. Bruce accepted it with one hand and played around with the reports on the Batcave’s shared folder with the other. They sat in companionable silence; as it slipped past Dick tucked each precious moment safe within him to soothe the still-ragged edges of desolation, the feel of it inside his chest the same rough stone as Bruce’s grave.

“So, we’ve had our tea and hellos,” Dick prompted when Bruce set his empty mug aside after a quiet three minutes. “What’s up?”

Bruce closed his files and inserted a microchip into the computer, bringing up several encrypted folders. “The ammunitions smuggling ring was the last of your ongoing cases?”

It was phrased as a question but since it wasn’t, Dick didn’t bother with a reply.

“The Green Lanterns received a tipoff a few days ago from one of their contacts on the space hub Dagatrix that increased amounts of nearby Hannovan Belt chalcanthite crystals, known as _thafalstron_ to the Dagatricians, have been passing through the system’s black market. Superman is concerned that this has something to do with Brainiac –”

“Because chalcanthite is one of the elements used in his miniaturisation technology,” Dick finished, unable to resist, and opened the specs he’d hacked from the League a few months ago. “Is the informant reliable?”

Bruce skimmed through Dick’s purloined folders with something pleased hiding at the corner of his mouth, and then opened new ones. “The Lanterns trust the source but the information has been translated into two languages and transferred through three outposts before arriving at the Watchtower. Red Tornado and I have done our best to clean up the transmission but it still has some holes. Nevertheless, the League believes even the potential threat of Brainiac justifies an off-world mission.”

“Yes, but didn’t your last intelligence report have Brainiac almost comatose after his latest clash with Superman and most of his network on the other side of the galaxy?”

“Did you hack that from the League, or from me?” Bruce enquired, interested.

“Code from the Batcave leads both ways,” was all Dick said, and Bruce let the implication lie.

“While we’re fairly sure he’s not within this sector of the galaxy, his knowledge of technology allows him to procure information more easily than we can, and from greater distances. If there’s any indication of a supply network opening up in this quadrant, Superman wants it investigated. Personally, I don’t believe Brainiac has anything to do with this, but I can see the logic of making sure. He is a formidable opponent.”

“And you’re here because…?” Dick trailed off expectantly. “Do you need me in the cape and cowl while you’re away? Another bird on the streets?” Truthfully, the thought of pulling on the suit again after six months back here sent an unsettling mix of emotions churning in his stomach. Not only had most of the criminal population of Blüdhaven assumed this new red-winged Nightwing was the original one’s successor after eighteen months of his absence, leaving him with a hell of a lot of ground to recover, but pulling on the cowl got easier each time. Dick had made a damn good Batman, and wasn’t that terrifying.

“No,” Bruce said, “I need you on Dagatrix with us.”

His tone was as level as it always was when it came to debriefing, and for a moment Dick didn’t fully process what he’d just said so casually. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I want you as part of the off-world team.”

Dick stared at him. “I’m not a member of the League.”

“You’ve been an unofficial auxiliary member almost since the League’s inception,” Bruce pointed out, and Dick glared at him.

“Correction – I don’t want to join the League.”

“You needn’t be part of the League to accompany us,” Bruce said, still infuriatingly calm. “The space hub Dagatrix is a small but wealthy trading outpost made up of several different factions controlled by one governing body, which is in turn formed by the richest business owners on the station. The language reflects this. It’s a bastardised conglomerate of pidgin tongues from most of the surrounding systems, and even the Lanterns’ rings can’t create a straightforward translation. I need someone with advanced linguistic skills and experience with the technical side of translators on the mission.” He looked expectantly at Dick.

“I am not the only one with those abilities,” Dick pointed out coldly.

“Telepaths are illegal on Dagatrix so Martian Manhunter can’t join us, and Red Tornado is already occupied. It’s not only inconvenient for me to be the only person on an off-world mission who knows the difference between a translator and a transceiver, it’s dangerous. Other than myself and Red Tornado, you know the tech better than –”

“I am not the only one with those abilities,” Dick reiterated, “and neither am I without prior commitments.”

It really shouldn’t surprise him after all these years but the man’s ability to insult with a backhanded compliment never ceased to amaze him. There went the mellow mood of earlier; Dick should have known Batman was only nice – or at least less of a bastard – when he wanted something. Bruce’s resurrection had redrawn and resettled the web in which their family co-existed, but he and Bruce had always been tangled together with a different type of thread and Dick knew that, too. It was humming between them now, a livewire ready to electrocute both of them if they made one wrong step, said the wrong thing, made the argument personal.

Dick inhaled sharply through his nose and straightened his back, opening his palms on his knees. It used to be easy between them – and it used to be worse. “I can’t simply up and leave Blüdhaven; the major syndicates are down for the moment but there’s been an increase in activities on the bayside wharfs and Nightwing will be needed. I still have a lot of ground to make up after more than a year’s absence; you of all people have to understand that.”

Bruce frowned at the obdurate look on Dick’s face like he’d actually expected Dick simply to ask ‘how high.’ “I do understand, Dick, but this mission cannot succeed without additional assistance –”

“Bruce. Cut the crap. The only times I’ve worked directly with the League are times of crises; this is not one. Why do you want me on this mission?”

Bruce breathed carefully too, and Dick recognised the rhythm for clear-headedness. “The League is a battering ram when I need a lock pick,” he conceded. “It’s a covert mission, an investigation into illicit black market dealings on an alien planet of which we have no first-hand knowledge, and Superman wants Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and Green Arrow to accompany me. He, apparently, can’t leave Metropolis while he still doesn’t know what Luthor’s planning with his newest laboratory acquisition. The penalty for incorrectly trading legal _thafalstron_ is ten years’ jail time; smuggling justifies life imprisonment. We don’t even have a clear-cut system of translation, and the League thinks we can just walk in and escape detection not only by Brainiac’s spies, but by the Dagatrix authorities who keep a tighter hold on the trade than Luthor does his shares. I need someone to investigate alone, separate and unconnected to the League. It’s a specialised, unassisted mission in a dangerous field with a specific skillset required, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do it.”

God, what he wouldn’t give to be immune to words like those! Damn the man; Dick was already reviewing contingency plans and wondering how much he’d have to bribe Jason to get his brother to watch over Blüdhaven for him. “See, and how hard was that?” he asked, mostly rhetorically, as he tried to get his feet under him again. “So, you’re organising a secondary, autonomous undercover mission alongside an undercover team whose discovery could result in life behind bars. Don’t think you slipped that one by me.”

Bruce looked steadily at him. “Even if we get caught, they’ll hold a trial first. I’d like to think that Queen would be the first to suggest a prison break after that but don’t take this lightly, Dick. I would rather not have to ask, but completing the mission successfully without secondary covert assistance will be…difficult.”

“It’s been a while since we faced lifetime incarceration,” Dick mused. “What do you really think about Brainiac?”

“I can’t rule out his involvement with so little evidence, though I personally think it’s unlikely. If he _is_ there, it’s possible he’ll have agents there who will recognise several League members on sight.”

“And that’s why you need to add an unknown factor to this equation.”

“Precisely. Hal Jordan has a contact who owes him a favour and can arrange separate passage for you on another ship. Additionally, the likelihood of the League succeeding in any undercover investigation is…” He and Dick shared a speaking look, and Bruce finished, “While tact is something Queen, at least, has mastered, none of them have the faintest idea how to properly investigate, how to gather evidence, or how to follow a lead unless it’s attached to a dog.”

The analogy surprised a snort of laughter out of Dick, and to his dismay he felt the last of his resentment fade at the sight of Bruce grinning slyly: _and everyone thinks I don’t have a sense of humour_.

“How long do you think the mission will last?” No need to let him know Dick was already going to say yes. After upheaval of the last few years the prospect of a mission off-planet was awfully tempting: Dick looked in the mirror these days and saw himself swinging on a lone trapeze, no landing platform in sight. He wasn’t employed at the moment, hadn’t been an officer of Blüdhaven’s finest in two years – and they were still wary of accepting him back after Dick had proved, with thorough if accidental success, that family concerns continually won out over employment contracts, and while he could hand back the mantle after Bruce’s return he had still been needed in Gotham. What with one thing and another, he needed to acclimate Damian to being the Robin to his father’s Batman, to welcome Tim back as Red Robin, to continue extending a hand to Jason, to offer what assistance Bruce could accept in compiling the events of the last year, to do any other million-and-one things he did without hesitating simply because Bruce was back, god, he was _alive_ …

Besides, accepting that Bruce would never feel the way Dick did and continuing their orbit was one thing; mourning the death of the love of your life and then trying to resettle back into those old, jagged-edged patterns upon his resurrection was quite another. Back and forth he went, drifting through the motions.

“A fortnight, at my best estimate,” Bruce answered, bringing Dick out of his head before he could be accused of inattention. “I don’t want to stay long, only enough to gather preliminary data and see if we really need to launch an overt investigation and petition Dagatrix legally through Oa. We’re scheduled to leave in two weeks. Most likely we’ll be upsetting an alien mogul keen on making some less-than-legal profit.” He tapped a few keys and the information began to download into the systems which operated Nightwing’s gauntlet computer.

“You, estimating?” Dick pulled the computer towards him and flicked through the files. The transmission was rather ambiguous – _Increase in contraband material Lantern-designated as chalcanthite through three of eight sectors of Dagatrix black market_ – and the background information on the planet was equally patchy.

“Here are the majority of Brainiac’s preferred algorithms and codes,” Bruce added another folder. “If we can match a partial fragment in the Dagatrix datastream to any of these, the League will consider it evidence enough.”

“Swell. I can’t think of anything that can go wrong if that happens, with half the heavy-hitters of the League off-planet, hundreds of light-years away.” Bruce grunted agreement and Dick continued, “What about Damian? This is the first off-planet mission you’ve taken with him as your Robin.”

“Alfred and Oracle are both capable of watching him, and Batwoman has agreed to patrol with him. Red Hood probably will as well, unless you want him here in Blüdhaven.”

Dick narrowed his eyes. “Bruce, we’ve talked about pre-emptive measures being presumptive.”

It was a perfectly useless reprimand, but he felt better for having said it. Bruce had the grace to at least feign mild contrition as he turned back to the laptop, but Dick stretched out a hand to rest his fingertips on Bruce’s wrist before he could focus on the screen. It was the only type of touch that could give the Batman a moment’s pause.

“Bruce,” he said quietly, staring into those intense eyes. “Ask me.”

A flicker of – something darted across Bruce’s face. “You’re right,” he replied quietly. “I haven’t.”

Dick quirked him a crooked smile. “I’d noticed.”

The way their shallow breaths brushed against each other could have struck sparks from skin, and the lost year yawned between them like a chasm.

“Will you?” Bruce murmured into the space between them, and thank god…Dick’s bones thrummed with aching relief.

“Why not? It’ll be fun. After all, what could possibly – you know what, I’m not going to tempt fate.”

* * *

Standing in the transport hall of the space hub Dagatrix a fortnight later and shaking off the jittery feeling from an unfamiliar wavelength de-atomising and re-atomising him, Dick considered the possibility that fate had it in for him anyway.

The Thanagarians, Kryptonians and the Martians were really the only aliens he knew, and they were so _human_ in appearance and manner that he was woefully unprepared for the reality of interstellar travel. Oh, Dick was aware that the universe surely contained more species than those bipedal beings dreamt up by the likes of Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas, but actually _being_ the alien for once, being the only human among a thousand, a hundred thousand, other races, was more than a little unsettling.

What on earth – or not, as the case may be – had possessed him to agree to a covert mission in space, lightyears away from everything he’d even known?

Well, apart from the fact that it was a covert mission in space, lightyears away from everything he’d even known. Damn, Damian was right: he really had just given the League a precedent to co-opt his assistance for off-world missions. He’d never been before, despite his immediate infatuation with the Observation Deck in the Watchtower. God, the sheer impossibility of it all!

There ahead, a six-legged creature with no identifiable head bought glowing green orbs from a purple vendor who seemed entirely composed of interlocking puzzle pieces.

By the wall, three bees the size of carthorses chattered together and sipped from black pouches while a fourth crouched over and scolded…something attached to a lead; the closest Dick could come to an Earth equivalent was an octopus, if an octopus had feathers.

Exiting a shuttle onto the Station, a dozen or so black gas creatures constantly shifted shape until Dick doubted his counting; they could be one organism, they could be hundreds.

Everywhere, things Dick could never have imagined walking, floating, oozing, dancing, twirling, jittering, hopping, sliding, past.

“Good luck,” Captain L’uk said dryly, patting him on the back with one of hir four ruby-skinned hands before marching off with the rest of the crew of the merchant ship _Abrath_ trailing behind hir.

“Gee, thanks,” Dick muttered, but the favour L’uk had owed Hal Jordan only amounted to a place on the _Abrath_ when the ship docked in Dagatrix. Arriving a day later and aboard a completely separate vessel made it less likely any potential spy would connect Dick to the rest of the League, but Dick would have appreciated company through the second part of Customs. The hoops he and the crew had had to jump through up on the Docking Station were apparently a preliminary.

“Next,” the terminal at the desk beeped, shaking him out of his thoughts, and Dick stepped forward, inserting his visa chip into the flashing port and putting his bag on the scanning table. The system hummed and scanned him head to toe with an isotopic beam that made him wonder if his teeth were supposed to make that noise, but his visa chip was accepted after a long, tense minute and no weapons were discovered either on his person or in his bag.

Dick refused to let out a breath of relief: to doubt Batman’s work was something like sacrilege – not that he’d ever tell the man that. Everything was genuine, after all. Batman had gone through the Green Lantern channels to get his hands on the visas, and the fact that they were registered to Robbie Perisher of Kolkyx VI, an only-just-spacefaring planet in the Lanterns’ databanks with the same atmosphere as Earth and an amazingly similar dominant bipedal species, was neither here nor there. Dick tapped his fingers unobtrusively together to check the fake fingerprints were still in place and grabbed his bag, the familiar weight of his escrima sticks, built into the structure of his case, settling the caterpillars threatening to pupate into butterflies in his stomach.

Now, all that he needed to do was to find his travel inn in Sector Seven and check in with Bruce. Staring at the menagerie before him, the translator built into his earpiece chattering bits of broken English as it attempted to compensate for the clicks, whistles, blorts, grunts, shrieks, hisses and braying human senses were never supposed to hear, Dick ruefully acknowledged some things were easier said than done.

 _Please never let Tim find out how many times I got lost,_ he thought to himself three exhausting hours later as he tried not to walk through a cluster of beings floating near the door that, all higher powers willing, led to the inn he’d booked. The landlady, an alien uncannily resembling a griffin, gave him a thorough lecture on what was and was not permitted in _H’fwel’s House of Rest_ before reluctantly handing over his key.

Tim was never going to find out how long it took Dick to work out how to turn on the shower, either. Apparently sonic showers were actually a thing here, and though he felt clean enough, Dick probably would have signed over half his inheritance there and then for a blissful deluge of hot water. Stepping out of the cupboard-sized bathroom, he looked around as he pulled on pyjamas. The room itself was tiny, with barely enough space to walk around the table wedged into the corner and the…contraption which was apparently a bed.

Dick cautiously put his weight onto it and settled down gratefully when nothing collapsed or folded up with him in the middle. Keying in Bruce’s frequency, he tossed his jacket and jeans onto the table and waited, jumping at the unfamiliar rasping sensation that resulted when he rubbed his chin. He’d let his stubble grow in preparation for the trip and Damian had almost refused to come near him when Dick had come to the Manor for dinner the night before they left, telling him scathingly he looked like a criminal lumberjack.

“I’m alive, in case you were wondering,” Dick said when the call connected, surprisingly clear of static for all that it had been routed through eight satellites to remain untraceable. “Thankfully I don’t have to pay for my own air here but it was pretty damn close. Everything else, well, I think I’ll be eating out a lot.”

Bruce’s usual _hrn_ rumbled down the line. “I did suggest –”

The tension of the day whooshed out of Dick as he laughed, straightening himself on the mattress when he realised curving around his earpiece made him feel like a teenager on the phone with his crush – again. “B, that place was five times more expensive and next to a second-hand market to boot.”

“Exactly. An optimal location for covert transactions.”

“Yeah, if you’re after the kind of collectibles you dig out of attic chests and label antiques for the gullible. This one is close to the cargo gates and the kinds of bars the merchant captains spend their downtime in. L’uk’s first mate Xanatos didn’t have anything to say about it, which from thirteen hours in his company I’m fairly sure means it’s a beacon of boring respectability. He literally looked like a rhino, if rhinos were purple and bipedal and lived in space…”

Bruce let him ramble on about his trip on the _Abrath_ , about the androgynous captain’s four arms and four eyes, the navigator’s wispy, almost translucent mass, the feet on the end of the first mate’s arms and the hands on the end of his legs, for almost three minutes, which was two minutes and thirty seconds more than Dick had honestly anticipated. “…and the diphthongs of the language were really fascinating. Here, I’m sending through my most recent modifications to the translator matrix, they should mesh with the theta-band workings and offer a more cohesive structure. So far I haven’t had too much trouble with any of the tech here, even the translator, though the Lantern specs render some syntaxes more than a little cumbersome.”

“I’ve found that too,” Bruce agreed, a little distracted as he downloaded Dick’s file.

“I’m going to keep tinkering with the system. I can’t promise we’ll ever truly parse Dagatrician, but we should at least be able to avoid any intergalactic insults.”

Bruce snorted, the sound still as familiar in Dick’s ear as it had been all those years ago when it wasn’t rare for Robin to crack the Bat’s stoic countenance with one of his better quips.

“Well, you didn’t bring me along just for my charming personality,” Dick retorted, grinning. “Those ionised sub-harmonics aren’t going to conjugate themselves.”

“Oh, is that what I brought you for,” Bruce said dryly. “I recall somebody saying something about prior commitments when offered the unique chance to study the conglomerate language personally.”

“I’ll hang up on you,” Dick threatened, knowing his voice was too warm, revealed too much, “Don’t think I won’t.”

“Hrn,” was all Bruce said, but this one was indulgently tolerant and Batman had been the same, on the first leg of the flight on the way to the rendezvous with the _Abrath_. He’d been just a little more commanding than usual, too, just a little more elaborate with his explanations of the mission and expectations of the team. Part of Nightwing had wondered whether he should try to soften Batman’s vehemence on behalf of the others, but the rest had been too damned delighted with the idea that Batman was showing off for him and his first off-world mission to consider bringing attention to the nuances of behaviour only Oliver Queen, at best, would even notice.

All at once Dick wished Damian was here, his pugnacious little Robin whose loyalty to Dick was not straightforward but could be counted on, after he’d earned it. Tim studied languages with the same diligence he accorded every tool of their double lives, but it was Damian, bilingual from birth, who really enjoyed learning – though that was partially because he loved insulting people secure in the knowledge they didn’t understand a word. Yet another boy bereft of a parent at nearly the same age both his father and Dick had been, another little lost soul that had fallen into Dick’s keeping as he himself had fallen into Bruce’s. There, Dick had to admit, many of the similarities ended, but while at first taking Damian under his wing had been to honour Bruce, to carry on his legacy and to offer a home and an outlet to a grieving child just as the offer had been made to him, Dick could admit that his little brother had soon wormed his way into Dick’s heart for his own sake.

They really were a tangled web of a family, and here Dick was, contemplating in his heart of hearts another type of string between himself and Bruce. If there was just one sign – any indication at all – he’d never let go if he could just believe it was requited –

No point wasting time on hypothetical suppositions. Bruce had never given any indication he would welcome the kind of relationship Dick craved to establish with him, and while the anguish of what-ifs had plagued Dick all throughout that grief-stricken year, while the reality of death had made him wish so desperately he’d done something when Bruce was alive because that was _it_ , life was short and dangerous and they didn’t have time to waste –

Here he was again, too petrified to do anything to break the delicate balance that had regrown between them. He didn’t know what he would do if he lost Bruce so soon after getting him miraculously back due to something so stupid as his own desire. Bruce loved him, he knew, but sometimes it was too much and yet not enough, not when the type of love Dick craved involved physical, sexual, _emotional_ intimacy and Bruce spent ninety percent of his life behind one mask or another.

God, this eternal paradox of theirs.

He’d been silent for a few seconds too long now, Dick knew, and listening to the calm steadiness of Bruce’s breathing over the line wasn’t helping his minor melt-down.

“Sorry,” he said, scrubbing roughly at his face and sitting up. “Was just thinking about Baby Bat shouting about the nuances of expression. Cute kid.”

“Now there are two words I’d never thought I’d hear applied to him,” Bruce replied wryly. “I don’t think he would have liked Dagatrician Customs.”

“Oh? Did you have trouble?”

“Hawkgirl’s mace was almost seized, and only a Thanagarian permit and a few…compensations for services rendered got it through. We already have a tail.”

Dick pursed his lips. “From an expected party?”

“Unclear,” Bruce admitted, and Dick could hear the frustration. “It’s been difficult to hack any devices he may be carrying, and Green Arrow can’t get a clear shot to attach a tracker to him. It simply may be someone from Hawkgirl’s past on Thanagar, thanks to her display at Customs, but we can’t rule anything out. She and Arrow will investigate Sector Four, and Gardner and I are working on Sector One.”

“I’d better get on with my side of things, then,” Dick replied. “Have fun with Gardner!”

“Be careful,” Bruce said immediately, and Dick made sure to sigh as loudly and long-sufferingly as possible.

* * *

Dagatrix had an artificial night, created by dimming the overhead lights and changing their intensity, but Gardner had not been exaggerating when he’d said it was an all-hours trade hub. Dick was just thankful he was tired enough to sleep through most of the bustle, and wake at the time he’d set only slightly groggy.

Dressing and grabbing a bar made of sort of grain, Bruce’s admonitions about not eating anything without a certified Universal Application sticker echoing in his mind, Dick took a breath and plunged into the intergalactic wonder beyond the doors. The Flash had made the mistake of trying a local delicacy the first time the League visited the Iota Quadrant; the way his skin turned magenta with lime dots and he almost vibrated right out of reality had been apparently only a mild allergic reaction. Nibbling at the bar and mourning the loss of Alfred’s coffee thousands of lightyears away, Dick wound his way through the hub and revelled in the marvels on offer. His translator chirped away in his ear – _Get your fresh xx’fhrr here! No finer in the sector! Two Excelsior-class couplers for the price of one! New Apollonian silk in store! One rivet for eight globls! –_ but every so often Dick turned it off and tried without much success to pick apart the Dagatrician language around him.

A vendor’s cry finally caught his attention and Dick whistled softly to himself at his first sight of _thafalstron,_ gleaming in a pendant with a certified guarantee of authenticity displayed proudly in the shop’s window. It really was beautiful, a deep sea-green gem set in silver that refracted light like a mirror. Shame that Brainiac crushed the gem into granules to feed his machine.

Aware the owner was eyeballing, and he had six, which made it triply impressive, anyone loitering outside his shop, Dick pushed onward, trying not to stand in or on any appendages. None of them would be able to afford even a sample of legal _thafalstron,_ for one thing. The Lanterns had exchanged some currency and Dick had a decent helping of quoits and globls in his pockets, but they were for necessities only. Gardner assured them some Dagatricians loved to barter for unusual things, but legitimate sellers were only interested in hard cash.

Sector Seven was one of the larger ones, abutting as it did the docking compound used by a majority of cargo ships, and the type of shops lining the promenade changed dramatically the closer Dick got to the blast walls surrounding the airlocks and docks. From sculptures, finery, tat and clutter, the stalls became centred on machines, engines, homewares and practical goods, with the ubiquitous bars and food stalls dotted here and there. Dick settled on a stool outside a bar opposite the larger of the two certified _thafalstron_ stores in the sector and nodded to the bartender.

“What’ll it be?” the being asked, enormous nose quivering above two deep-set eyes.

“Synthale,” Dick said, and slid over the coins to accept a glass of what the Lanterns promised was a basic, beer-like beverage which was hard to get wrong.

Dick took a sip and – well, someone had got something wrong.

He made desultory conversation with the bartender over the next hour as beings came and went, sipping his tepid synthale and keeping one unobtrusive eye on the jewellery store. His gauntlet computer mined through the chatter as best it could, but when nothing more interesting occurred than the bartender’s brother tackling a patron who owed him money, Dick pushed his half-full glass away and wandered down the promenade towards the second certified store.

A bright purple bun that tasted oddly of rutabaga settled the uneasy feeling in his stomach left by the synthale, and Dick spent the rest of the day wandering through the triangle between the two stores and the passage leading to the cargo bay, where he watched the industrial freighters dock and launch with ponderous grace. He hoped the others weren’t testing Bruce’s patience too much: it was easy to forget the core of detective work was a scavenger hunt for minutia.

The next day was more of the same, though he varied his route and meandered through several different market places, eyes wide behind his dark glasses. The air was thick with scents he couldn’t identify, some aromatic and others he wouldn’t put past being toxic to humans, and again and again his eye was caught by some marvel, be it an alien who seemed to exist between two dimensions simultaneously or a jacket with three sides or liquid which poured upwards or mirrors which reflected back your face as it was this time yesterday… It was lucky, then, that he didn’t have that much to spend after all, even though Dick made sure to pick up some souvenirs for his brothers.

It was his mostly-successful communication with the vendors that made the second day something to write home about. There were some perks after all to being unemployed and buoyed by a trust fund: Dick had been learning Dagatrician as best he could for the past two weeks and put his more basic phrases into gratifyingly understandable use several times during the shopping expeditions. The first time the sloth-like vendor had told him his translator was broken and seemed unimpressed when Dick told him he wasn’t using one, the second had humoured him for about thirty seconds before being distracted when one of his vegetables had started attacking a passer-by, but the wrinkled, beaming little being with wispy hair which moved on its own volition cooed and smiled and indulged him with a half-hour practice session.

“ _Progress, how the day of yours_?” Dick struggled onwards, half his attention on choosing paints for Damian, and she tutted, smacking his hands away.

“ _Too proper! Movement and mood at the end, little tongue._ ”

Dick tried again, ignoring the amused looks from two of the neighbouring vendor’s three heads. “ _How does the day of yours progress_?”

“ _Good_!” She trilled. “ _It is good! But now, listen: you, of you, of yours, by you, from you_. _Not the day of yours, but your, subjective experience, day_.”

“ _I think not tongue of mine can make sounds_ …” Dick said, touching his own throat. Those were some sharp guttural clicks.

Madame Badal just patted his hand and waited expectantly.

In all modesty, Dick’s throat had had worse. “… _khen, khan, khanenk, ko’khen, ka’khnanen_ …”

Grammatical lessons with a Eurypidon in a Dagatrician market: Babs was going to love this. Madame Badal grudgingly released Dick fifteen minutes later, telling him to come back any time he fancied a chat, some blenil tea, or an introduction to her niece, and Dick made sure to properly farewell her in the Dagatricians’ most formal style before hightailing it out of there, ears ringing and tongue like sandpaper.

Even Dick did not have inexhaustible stores of energy, and so the third day was spent curled up in blissful peace on his bed combing through his streams of data. Hacked snippets of security cameras, transcripts, basic transactions over an unsupported network – he only emerged from trying to identify Brainiac’s algorithms when the alarm began to ping at him. Tim, the hypocritical little shit, had rigged an alert to go off if Dick had been working for more than eight hours straight and Dick had yet to figure out how to erase it without deleting some of his important files. Babs just laughed at him when he complained about it to her.

When he awoke after another restless night, convinced every second passer-by had been louder than the previous one, Dick took advantage of the bars welded to the top of the bed for the non-bipedal aliens and completed as many reps of chin-ups as his shoulders could stand, all the while letting his mind wander over the accumulated facts of the last three days. It was highly unlikely any legal _thafalstron_ vendor would jeopardise their business by trading on the black market; his reconnaissance was more of a ruling-out than a scoping-out. No suspicious activity had been picked up by the Dagatrician authorities either, who surely would know what to look for. Bruce’s daily message indicated he was of the same mind, which left them with a countryside rather than a hayfield in which to search for their needle.

Dick had his own theories about that: in his experience, there was nothing going on that a bartender didn’t know about.

No one was ever going to know that the fourth day faded away in a blur of bar-hopping, dodgy drinks, increasingly incomprehensible conversation, and finally a fight when a five-tentacled alien tried to lift Dick’s decoy money pouch. The bartender, to give him his due, waited until Dick had flipped the offender over his shoulder and into a wall before approaching with his baton. The crowd obediently dispersed like fog in the dawn, Dick along with it.

Nope, never ever telling anyone that Dick spent the evening cresting his tipsy high and then feeling sorry for himself, trying to pre-empt the hangover by drinking what was surely half his bodyweight in deionised water. At least he slept the night through this time, too tired to be woken by the never-ceasing ebb and flow of Dagatrix’s inhabitants.

Staring at himself in the mirror the next morning, Dick hummed thoughtfully and swallowed two aspirin. “It could be worse,” he told his reflection. No visible bruises, and only a tiny headache. A few small bread-like rolls left over from dinner last night settled his stomach, a quick session in the sonic shower relieved the simmering heat of last night’s dream, and he plotted a route to a section of the cargo bay whose designation Dick had caught at the edge of his hearing several times the day before.

Bruce had apparently been having the much the same luck, even with Shayera getting in touch with the contact of a contact, and Gardner was, according to Bruce’s acerbic heavily-encrypted message, getting antsy. There was no indication so far of any interference by Brainiac, and being undercover did not allow the Lantern to float about and avoid the complications of ‘civilian’ investigation. Dick did not envy his partner in the slightest, and pretended he wasn’t missing him. Oh no, he thought sardonically to himself, five days without Bruce, however shall I cope.

The landlady, who Dick could only assume was the eponymous H’fwel of _H’fwel’s House of Rest_ , gave him a sharp look when he asked about the best way to get to Ring Eight, and told him tourists like him wouldn’t want to see such a boring part of the cargo docks and to try the arcade by Sector Three.

“Thank you, I must have misheard,” he said cheerfully, tapping his earpiece in explanation. “I’ll be back later, then.”

Ring Eight turned out to be the docking alcove closest to the massive doors of the cargo bay, crammed in against the sector wall. Presumably only the one-ship traders and single-venture merchants were directed to it, and Dick smiled to himself as his wrist computer immediately began to mine through the coded layers underneath normal transmissions.

“What’s a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?” he asked the surly bartender of the dingy bar next to Ring Eight’s passenger gate as he slid onto the bench.

“Nothing you can afford,” the being snorted.

“I know, that’s why I’m asking,” Dick shot back, but the alien just glared. “Fine. Ylaxian Tea.”

He was fairly sure he caught the words _mewling_ _mild-mouthed tourist_ as the bartender turned away, and Dick laughed to himself. The purple-skinned lady sitting near him gave him an amused look as she sipped her own smoky drink, and mild-mouthed Dick might be, but he at least had a silver tongue.

“It is that obvious?” he asked, grinning at her.

“Not as obvious as a – could be,” she said, his translator glitching over whatever simile she had used. “I’ve never seen your like around here.”

Dick accepted his ominously orange drink and indicated the stool next to her. “Can I join you?”

She gave him an odd look, and Dick sighed, rewording his request in a way that didn’t imply fusion. “Could I take that seat?”

“Oh! Yes, why not? You don’t look like you’re going to leave slime all over me.”

He paused. “Was that an error in my translator?”

“No,” she sighed. “Believe me, I wish it was.”

“Well, I promise not to leave slime all over you,” Dick replied solemnly, and then gave her his favourite lopsided grin as he settled beside her. It worked in this section of space too – he’d have to remember to brag about that to Roy and Wally later.

It was a very profitable few hours. Unge’tar was not only a freighter captain who used Ring Eight to ferry industrial parts as far as four space sectors out, but something of a linguist as well, and someone who, implied by a few easy references, was at least familiar with _thafalstron_. With her help, Dick narrowed down the theta-band on his translator even further and cut out at least a third of the generalisations to which the Lantern algorithms were prone before allowing himself to get distracted by her stories.

“You sold a second-hand empty blaster clip as a ritual item from a mythical temporal-temple? And they actually bought it for six hundred quoits?” Dick repeated delightedly, ordering Unge’tar another of her smoky drinks.

“And why not?” she laughed. “If they didn’t know enough to tell the difference, it’s no scales off my back. Not everything is as clear-cut as _thafalstron_.”

“I’ve only seen that in store windows,” Dick sighed. “Have you been near the Belt? I can’t believe it’s actually a band of crystals just suspended in space, stardust and elements making more as the world turns.”

“Shh, little one,” Unge’tar chided indulgently in a slightly lower voice, glancing briefly at the bartender lurking nearby, ostensibly polishing glassware. “Don’t ask too many questions about that section in Dagatrix. They hold tighter to their _thafalstron_ than the gravity wells to their stars.”

“Ah, apologies,” he directed a sheepish smile at her. “I know it is a business the government oversees. It’s just so incredible to think about.”

“The security round the Belt makes the blockade of Crait look like the play of younglings,” she agreed, a little sourly. “Still, elite exclusivity is expensive, as Pal – plenty of beings like to say.”

 _Ah_ …Satisfaction swept through Dick, the mild tea in his stomach transformed into the warmth of good scotch, or whatever the smoky drink the captain was imbibing by the tankard. “Nothing worth having that isn’t hard to get,” he nodded, giving nothing away in his glib grin.

Unge’tar smiled coyly back. “And the buyer must be brighter, as they say.”

“We say buyer beware,” he offered, “but I like yours better.”

“Ah, you Kolkyxians are so interesting!” Unge’tar purred at him, tracing the rim of her glass with one dainty finger. Unfortunately – fortunately? She might have had two tongues but whatever was in Unge’tar’s drink was eating through the counter where she’d spilled a drop trying to demonstrate a manoeuvre she’d pulled escaping from pirates – Dick’s gauntlet beeped.

“Sorry,” he said, bringing up the screen. It was just a notification that one of his diagnostics had finished, but he was man enough to take the escape. “My ship’s repairs are almost finished.”

“The stars call,” she sighed, accepting his excuse. “They do to me too. I shall fly out tonight, Robbie.”

“Fair travels,” Dick replied, sliding a few coins over the counter to the bartender.

“The stardust to your sails,” Unge’tar said, and lifted a hand as Dick slipped out the door.

Well, that was interesting. Very interesting. The bartender had been polishing glasses nearby in between serving other patrons, and Dick was an expert at looking without being seen. Unge’tar was mostly likely a smuggler, if Dick was any judge of character, and just tipsy enough to be in a gregarious mood with a naïve young first-timer eager for her stories. As soon as she had mentioned _thafalstron_ , the bartender had slowed his methodical wiping of his glasses. By the time ‘Pal-’ came up, Dick wouldn’t want to be drinking out of the last glass: the barman had been moving so slowly the dirt was just being shifted from one side to the other.

Strolling along the promenade for a few blocks, Dick checked the reflection of the street behind him in a storefront and then doubled back on himself several times before ducking into the Dagatrician equivalent of an internet café.

When he called Bruce that evening Dick had three possibilities. “…and I picked up all sorts of interesting coded sublayers of transmissions when I walked by this afternoon. No one takes the time to embed that many pockets of encrypted data in routine traffic unless you have something to hide. Moreover, Palnik Engines, Palwren Cargo Flights and Palthys Supply and Support are all run by their eponymous being, and all have storefronts, or franchises, or whatever the Dagatricians want to call them, in Sectors One, Four, Seven and Eight. More than a coincidence?”

Bruce was silent for a moment. “Good work, Dick,” he said at last. “You said a freighter captain mentioned this?”

“Yeah. Not overtly, but she said ‘Pal-’ before she cut herself off, and during the whole conversation the bartender was a little too interested. Either he was keeping an ear out for future possibilities or he was making sure she didn’t spill too much information. I’ll forward the data packages now for you to double-check. I’m not promising anything, but if this is something to do with smuggling it could be the link to the increase of black market goods we’ve been looking for. The League only decided to look into it because chalcanthite is a favourite substance of Brainiac’s. There wasn’t any other proof, unless you’ve been holding out on me.”

Dick let himself trail off, and Bruce answered the implication. “I wouldn’t jeopardise the mission like that, Nightwing.”

“I know,” Dick said quietly, “but don’t pretend you haven’t lied by omission to me before, on matters just as serious.”

There was nothing Bruce could say to that and Dick nodded to himself. “I just thought I’d let you know, so you could decide if you wanted to add those stores to your investigation. I’ll follow my end here.”

“Alright,” Bruce replied. “I’ll tell the others.”

“Alright.”

Dick ended the call before he said anything unwise – _why did you do it, why do you still do it, do you think I work better_ knowing _you’re hiding something_ , and all the other irrelevancies that crowded his head at night when the grief was tearing him up and swallowing him whole. The Mission came first. He knew that, Bruce knew it, Alfred knew it, Damian and Tim and Jason and Barbara knew it, the whole damn caped community knew it.

No wonder he had a complex, Dick thought wryly. He knew he was important to Bruce, that he mattered, yet the man still tried to push him away, took advantage of his loyalty while keeping him in the dark. Bruce’s dependence on his integrity placed him on a pedestal and simultaneously left him clinging to a rung below the Mission, climbing a ladder lit sporadically and missing a handhold every other step when the information was kept from his reach. No wonder he’d had to perfect flying after a leap of faith.

Sleep was reluctant to arrive and prickly when it did, full of opaque dreams and half-formed ideas that darted out of reach as soon as he tried to grab them. He woke several times, sure he hadn’t slept between each gritty blink up at the dark ceiling, and woke the next morning heavy-eyed, dry-mouthed, and wishing he was back home in his bed where the springs didn’t attempt acupuncture.

Well, there was no time for wallowing in self-pity while there was work to do. Rolling over to grab his gauntlet computer, Dick sighed to see a message from Bruce flashing on the screen, telling him the datastream he’d tried to send yesterday was too bulky to pass unnoticed in their little enclosed system.

 _Meet me in W5TX88.9g in 18hrs_ , the message ended, and Dick indulged himself by burying his head under the pillow.

Bartering with relative clarity his spare pair of sunglasses for the hot drink passing for coffee and two warm pancakes marginally improved his mood, but still the shadows seemed to linger. The fact that his second recon turned up the same morass of near-impenetrable coded sublayers as his first didn’t help, the additional data neither removing the focus from one store nor highlighting another.

Dick was no stranger to the low tides of both detective and superhero work, and was too old a hand to let the creeping melancholy affect his work, but the gnawing doubts, well, everyone in their line of work was affected now and again. Did anything you do even matter, was the core of it. Sometimes it felt like for all he did, it was never enough. Stop a bar brawl here, and the next night it just happened further down the street, glass flying, blood spraying. Save a life here, and because you’d turned left instead of right two other people died. Return the Joker to Arkham, and a month later he was back out wreaking havoc.

He knew what he did was worthwhile, was worth the world when another child, another parent or sibling or friend or lover, was spared going through what he and Bruce and so many others had gone through, but being so far from home was sapping his usual reserves. Dick was used to working alone, but back home Babs wasn’t more than a call away, nor were his brothers, Kory, Roy, or Wally; just another voice to remind him he wasn’t alone – not even when he was so alone he felt like he’d die from it, the cavern in his chest yawning inside him, the wretched soar-sink sensation whenever he came across an old file with Bruce’s voice because Bruce was gone, that was all he had left: a vendetta, Damian, and a computer filled with more ghosts than even Arkham –

Dick swore at himself, stepping into a corner in the market and trying to calm the sickly rush of adrenalin. Being in a crowd this loud and bright and psychedelic was no help as he attempted to still the shaking in his hands, and eventually Dick conceded defeat and stopped for something to eat in a less-frequented diner in the backstreets of Sector Eight.

Enough. He was out here for a mission, in a completely alien environment likely to turn hostile at any infringement. When this was finished he could take a long hard look at his life and try to figure out where to go next, but that would only be _after_ they avoided life imprisonment and made sure Brainiac wasn’t preparing for yet another invasion. When they were safe, Dick would sit down and muddle through. Oh, he was still in love with Bruce, no doubt about that, not that he’d expected anything else by this point, and most of his walls were being rebuilt the more Bruce indicated he was glad in his subtle, awkward way to have Dick by his side as friend and partner, no more no less. But what else? What next? What then?

Later, he told himself sternly. Later, he’d take some time to himself and disappear somewhere for a good long think. Europe, maybe. Stop by London and then wander through, see where Haly’s Circus was this time of year. For now, he had to find W5TX88.9g, prepare his accumulated files for transfer, and report on his impressions of Palnik Engines, Palwren Cargo Flights, and Palthys Supply and Support: nondescript, lackadaisical, and grimy respectively.

 * * *

The lamps used for night lighting were concentrated on the main passages, and in the warren of smaller back corridors it was easy to forget this was a space station and not another dark, seedy section of Blüdhaven. Dick even felt his spirits rising at the familiarity as he crept down towards the warehouse block of Sector Six. A jamming signal and maps from Gardner’s earlier reconnaissance made slipping past any cameras an easy task, and Dick arrived at the meeting spot, a narrow ally cutting between two buildings and made uninviting by a broken piece of generator, in time to see Bruce approach from the other end.

Batman had once again gone above and beyond his usual standards of making sure no one would ever connect either Batman or Bruce Wayne to Huthor Brek of Kolkyx VI. Dick, though, was left with a mild and very foreign sense of vertigo. Batman’s mask left his mouth free and Dick had gotten very good at deciphering those partial expressions, but now with the set-up reversed, he wasn’t sure he was experienced enough at interpreting Bruce’s bare forehead.

“I didn’t know I’d be seeing Matches Malone all the way out here, old man,” he whispered as Bruce crouched beside him under the cover of the generator and allowed Dick the risk of turning on his computer screen with the brightness dimmed right down. “Although I guess Space Matches would be more appropriate. I like the breather-lookalike. Very Winter Solider. I’m trembling in my boots, I promise.”

Bruce grunted at him. The gauze and matte plastic black mask covered the entirety of his lower face to just under his eyes and in the light from the screen Dick could see, with an odd jolt in the pit of his stomach, the brown contacts in his eyes. He’d always known how good Bruce was with disguises and characters, but not being able to see his mouth was…more than a little unsettling.

“Anyway,” Dick said, trying not to feel that his simple dark glasses, trench coat and stubble was inadequate when set next to Huthor Brek, “here’s the data. Give me your tablet.”

Bruce handed it over and Dick plugged in the cord. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how Bruce was finding Dagatrix, but the man was never good with small talk at the best of times and so they watched the progress bar load in silence.

As it neared seventy-five percent Bruce whispered suddenly, “How is Sector Seven?”

Dick stared at him. “Fine. I’ve covered most of it and the updated maps are all included.”

“I don’t doubt that. It – sounds interesting. Sector One is more corporate. Toggle the C2 relays.”

Dick did, blinking behind his glasses, wondering. “I mean, Seven’s a bit more ramshackle near the cargo bay. The traffic control there must be a nightmare, but I guess compared to the orbiting Docking Station it mustn’t be so bad.”

“Mmm,” Bruce agreed. “We waited three hours to dock. Green Arrow was starving by the end of it, but wasn’t impressed with the local cuisine.”

Snickering, Dick told him about the vendor with the aggressive vegetables, and was rewarded with the slight creasing around Bruce’s eyes that meant he was considering letting a small smile unfold. Emboldened, Dick continued with stories about his Dagatrician practice and Bruce contributed his own work on the translator, and by the time the upload was complete Bruce’s side was flush against Dick’s and his low murmuring warm by his ear.

“That’s everything, I think,” Dick said reluctantly, when he could no longer delay disconnecting the devices. “What are your plans for the rest of the week?”

“Cross-referencing the data Green Arrow sent over from Sector Four and keeping an eye on the struggling chalcanthite vendor by the sixth corridor. There have been spikes in his communication at odd hours.”

“I still don’t think any legal seller will risk it,” Dick said, and Bruce nodded.

“I agree, but I still want to rule him out. With this new data we should get somewhere before either Green Lantern pulls out his ring or Hawkgirl carries through with her threat to die from boredom. Thank you.”

“For what? The data? It’s my job.”

“No, I know, just – well done.”

Heart abruptly in his throat, Dick nodded his response. “I – thanks. Let me know what you find. I really want to get back to a bed that isn’t trying to fold up with me in it halfway through the night.”

“So do I,” Bruce admitted. “And a pillow that wasn’t a grain sack in a past life.”

“Did I tell you I got new pillows last Black Friday? I swear, it’s like going to sleep cradled on a cloud,” Dick sighed happily.

“Mmm, I’ll have to try them some time,” Bruce said, tucking away the tablet, and Dick’s heart bypassed his throat and lodged itself firmly in his mouth, tying his tongue in knots. Oh my god, was that –

“Don’t get between a man and his bed, I always say,” he said faintly, only half aware of the nonsense coming out of his mouth. _If you were in my bed nothing could keep me away_ – but thank god he still had enough sense not to blurt _that_ out.

“I’d better not keep you from yours, then. Be careful getting back.” Bruce shifted from sitting back to a crouch, and Dick scrambled with much less than his usual grace up beside him.

“You too,” he said. “Keep me updated. Good luck.”

Bruce squeezed his shoulder briefly and then slipped away into the shadows, and Dick gave his knees a moment to recover before doing the same. There was absolutely no way he had enough space in his head to process whatever _that_ had been, so Dick resolutely tucked it away and focused only on getting back to Sector Seven without trespassing on any of the midnight gangs’ territory out here in the black labyrinthine corridors of the space hub. He kept thinking he needed some string, that if only he could tie one end to Bruce and one end to himself they wouldn’t get so lost in the maze between them, but even after Bruce’s resurrection Dick didn’t know if there was any thread in the world long enough to traverse the gap still left behind.

Inspired by Space Matches’ dedication to disguise, when Dick roamed the corridors around Ring Eight next day he’d shaved and pulled on a sandy blonde wig that, in his opinion, clashed horribly with his complexion. Judging by Jason’s uproarious reaction the few times he’d seen Dick wearing it, it was more fact than vanity. Still, it made it easier to loiter in broad lamplight, picking idly at his food, the two times a ship bearing a crest identical to the one Unge’tar had worn on her flightsuit docked at the cargo bay. His gear wasn’t nearly powerful enough here to completely piggyback the subspace transmissions but all he really needed was confirmation of there being something passing through Ring Eight whose innocuous surface covered a wealth of covert coded transmissions.

Tossing the wrapper from his sandwich into a nearby incinerator, Dick melted away into the shadows and brought up the program. Studying the data carefully, he charted the pockets of static that indicated subspace communication as best he could with the limited resources of his gauntlet computer, and was just about to close it down and return to the House of Rest when a coordinate buoy pulsed gently at him from the edges of his map. He saved the associated tracker data generated by his own systems as a matter of course, but before his analysis could begin the original code vanished, scrubbed from the river of wireless communications flowing overhead like debris scooped up with a net and a deft wrist.

Dick immediately severed all his remaining links to the open intranet of Dagatrix and hurried back.

Why was a covert, heavily embedded signal being routed through Sector Five’s satellites from Ring Eight? No, that was a stupid, obvious question. Rather, what was so important that they had to risk a transmission that would create a tangible ripple in the first place, even one they could later delete?

Sending Bruce and Oliver everything he’d found that morning, Dick shored himself up behind the relative security of the portable firewalls Oracle had lent him and ran every algorithm he could think of. By the end of the day the only thing he could safely say was that it wasn’t Brainiac.

Dick scrubbed at his eyes when another search revealed no results, and tossed his gauntlet – gently – down to the end of his bed, sprawling back against the headboard and sullenly picking at his cereal. There was too much miscellaneous data floating about in his head. He just needed a key, something that would slip into the cogs so one twist would flip all the locks, and he didn’t have one. Not a whole one, anyway: he had scraps and puzzle pieces without a helpful box to show him what the outcome was supposed to look life.

It was possible, Dick reflected dully, that he had underestimated the sheer alienness of the mission.

Before he could fully commit to a sulk, an incoming call chirped in his earpiece.

“Nightwing, that transmission locator buoy,” Bruce said before Dick could do more than open the channel, “It was what we’d been looking for.”

Dick bolted upright, despondency gone. “What do you mean?”

“Gardner fitted the trace into an analysis I’d been running on the subspace transmissions from Palnik Engines and linked his ring up to your newest translator module,” Bruce explained, sounding – sounding actually excited, for the first time in a long time. “I found several off-the-books companies when researching Palnik, so we focused on it. We’d patched together a few cohesive fragments and when you sent through that subspace indicator, we matched the coordinates to code I’d found in the analysis and deciphered an implicit rendezvous and a confirmed location. I’m sending you the fragment now.”

“Holy puzzle pieces, Batman,” Dick said a little blankly as he stared at his screen.

_… expected launch…W4BQ59.56g…confirmed passage out…cargo…to discuss payment._

“The League is preparing to monitor the site now,” Bruce told him, the background sounds resolving into gear being readied,

“What? No!” Dick hissed, attention thoroughly diverted from the message. “It’s too soon, Batman, you have no idea what you’re walking into!”

“If we don’t move now, we might miss it. There was no time mentioned in the message.”

“The risks outweigh the benefits, and I can’t believe I’m saying this to you,” Dick snapped, vaulting off the bed and beginning to gather his own things, cursing the temper which had made him fling his jacket and both boots in opposite corners of the room. “We’re already nearly sure this isn’t Brainiac’s doing; rushing in now will only jeopardise your position.”

“We need to be entirely sure,” Batman said. “This is too good an opportunity. We either confirm or completely discount Brainiac, and if the latter we can pass on to the Dagatrician authorities which, if any, of the three suspects are the ones actually behind the black market increase.”

“Batman, consider at least gathering more intel on the site, on its surroundings and neighbourhood. You can’t drag Leaguers whose concept of stealth is black tights and tiptoes in blind with two hours’ notice!”

“I’ve got the download running as we speak, Nightwing,” and the slight edge to his name instantly raised all of Dick’s hackles. Was Bruce seriously trying to remind _him_ of which one of them was Batman? “We’re moving in at midnight; three hours is enough.”

Dick made unproductive strangling motions with one hand as the other battled with knotted laces. “Impetuosity has never been your besetting sin. Even with both of us, the likelihood of detection is still –”

“You are not coming.”

Dick froze. “I beg your pardon?”

“You. Are. Not. Coming. Nightwing, you cannot be associated with this. If we are detected, there can be nothing linking you to us.”

Rage like wildfire sprang up inside him, and Dick fought through a scorched throat, “ _Are you out of your mind_?”

“This is not a discussion. You will remain a secondary _covert_ operative and stay far away from us.”

The connection was severed before Dick could draw enough breath to fan the blaze inside him and, bereft of a vent, he flung his boot at the wall hard enough to mark the paint. “ _Fuck_!”

Fists trembling, breath stuttering, Dick seized all his muscles in an iron band strong enough to contain the inferno until the first wave burnt itself into a vicious ember in the pit of stomach.

Batman could shove his bystanding bullshit up his shapely ass, and the embers threatened to flare again as memories surfaced of Damian training Titus to _sit, stay,_ but Dick fought the next wave down. Batman had revealed too much of his hand, and that was surprising enough to air the rest of the smoke. The League was going to stake out W4BQ59.56g in three hours and Batman had no way to enforce his orders.

The way forward, therefore, was simple.

Two hours later, Dick was tucked up under the shadowy eaves of a dilapidated department store in the shadier corner of Sector Five, four blocks away from W4BQ59.56g: a nondescript warehouse in a series of nondescript warehouses backed onto the sprawling complex that was Dagatrix’s industrial food supply centre. The reflective lining of his jacket should distort his size and shape in the eyes of any thermal imaging devices either Batman or Green Arrow had, there was a signal jammer in his pocket ready to be used, and he was far away enough that even with his binoculars he could just make out the two entrances – one door, front wall, centre; one window, right side, upper level, centre – of the warehouse. With his computer set to route his location back to _H’fwel’s House of Rest_ , he was about as invisible as he could be without Martian Manhunter’s ability to camouflage.

As midnight neared Dick glued his eye to the infrared binoculars. He noticed the batarang first, only because he knew to look for its effect: the huge overhead light burst in a flare of filament sparks. Hawkgirl moved in next, moments after the code he’d hastily devised alerted him to Batman’s own hack looping the warehouse camera footage. She checked the window, set whatever dampener Batman had supplied on the hinge, and eased the casing open. With her legs in, Hawkgirl shimmied her torso around till her wings were the only things sticking out, and then with a twist and a yank, managed to wriggle in completely.

Nothing else moved for the next five minutes, other than a group of rowdy drunks a street over, winding their way back to their accommodations. Then, just as Dick was wondering what he’d missed in his too-brief download and perusal of the same blueprints Bruce had undoubtedly used, a panel of roofing lifted over-so-slightly.

Impressed, Dick watched the distorted block of heat that was his infrared’s perception of Batman jump from the adjacent warehouse and assist Hawkgirl in prying off the cover of what looked like one of the emergency exits. Setting it aside, he gestured and Green Arrow rappelled up and in. Once he was inside, Batman followed and reset the cover.

Blind now that the durasteel of the warehouse blocked heat signatures, Dick sat back and continued scanning the corridors nearby, looking for the sentry Batman must have left. There, to the southeast: Gardner, three blocks to the other side of the warehouse and on the second floor of a motel, too close to the window for any decent sentry. Locking onto his channel was easy, and from there Dick could piggyback on his dormant link with the rest of the League.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes ticked by with no contact, no disturbances, nothing except Gardner occasionally shuffling about, probably trying not to get pins and needles.

Then –

“GL, receive recording,” Batman’s hushed growl came over the line. “The warehouse is registered to a subsidiary of a shell company with links to Palnik Engines. Some of shuttle parts in here have anti-radiation casing manufactured by one of Palnik’s departments.”

“Yes, and?” Gardner huffed.

“The anti-radiation shielding is concealing minute packs of chalcanthite in between its plates,” Batman retorted, and Dick punched the air. “We’re gathering more evidence, stand by.”

If he wasn’t perched on a tiny ledge and trying to be inconspicuous, Dick would have done a happy dance. As it was, he contented himself with an enthusiastic wiggle and then settled back just in time to notice movement out of the corner of his eye.

The spike of adrenalin nearly eviscerated him. “Contact imminent!” Dick hissed, overriding the connection between Gardner and the League and gathering his own gear. “Pull out now, security preparing a perimeter, six northwest, tactical gear; retreat now, roof is still out of sightline!”

Gardner confirmed, and added, “Three more southwest, you must have tripped something!”

“Nightwing, Lantern, go now,” Batman snapped. “Arrow, reset everything. Hawkgirl, get the roof.”

“Copy that,” Gardner said, “holy shit.”

Dick watched him retreat and make it down the street to the inter-section transporter without incident, but the rest of his attention was on the warehouse. What looked like private security were only one corridor away as the three Leaguers appeared on the roof, and he swore at them to hurry – in his own head, he had enough sense not to use an unsecured comm line. Green Arrow closed the exit and leapt off the roof to join Batman and Hawkgirl in the corridor below, and Dick followed their progress anxiously as they made it fifty metres, then a hundred.

“Alley fifty yards ahead,” Dick muttered, praying the mic picked it up, “hurry!”

The shadowy alley waited like a comforting maw, promising to hide anything inside – including the four security officers who leapt out just as the League neared it, each equipped with blinding floodlights. Batman, Green Lantern and Hawkgirl stumbled back, hands flying up to shield their eyes in time for six other officers to mob them, seize their wrists, wrench them down, and cuff them, pinning them to the spot and leaving Dick five blocks away utterly unable to do anything but run before a tracer pinpointed his linked systems.

It took everything he had not to sprint down the street outside the mall and instead walk like he had nothing on his mind. A swift left, a quick hop over a wall in a camera’s blind spot where he discarded his blonde wig, and then he slipped through the gate between the sectors on the heels of an Ent-like being moving slowly enough Dick didn’t need to scan his own visa chip to open the force field.

Once in Sector Six, he found the nearest blind spot and turned his jacket inside out, and then kept his head down and swiped the visa chip he’d, for want of a better word, borrowed from behind H’fwel’s counter to book an inter-section transporter. A minute later, counted sixty slow measured breaths and absolutely no extraneous thoughts, Dick rematerialised in Sector One and backtracked over his path before hoisting himself through the window of Bruce’s booked room where he knew Bruce had disabled the nearby street camera.

Gardner whirled around, fist up, ring glowing, but dropped the pose immediately. “Thank god,” he said. “What the hell do we do know?”

The molten _angerfearnotagain_ he’d repressed for the last hour finally erupted.

“That stupid asshole!” Dick spat, hurling Bruce’s pillow ineffectually at the wall. “You see, _you see_? This was what I meant! I warned him, I told him to look more into the surroundings but he refused, the stubborn bastard, I knew we should have looked into the warehouse guards more closely, but no, he had to do it his own way. If I were smuggling I’d want a private firm looking after my warehouse, discreet but not too shady, fuck! Rookie mistake.”

“So now what?” Gardner asked, when Dick fell silent in the middle of the room, panting, trembling fists clenched by his side, the old grief and fresh fear beginning to scrape through the hollows of his stomach. “You gonna do anything else with that spitfire temper, or just have a fit?”

Dick let out a whooshing breath and allowed his knees to tip him over onto Bruce’s bed, offering the Lantern his middle finger. The worst hadn’t happened yet, and wouldn’t, not if he had anything to say about it. Not again. It just figured that shit would hit the fan on the one mission Nightwing was running support, but at least it meant he was here to help clean it up. He was here, and Bruce was alive, and it was going to stay that way if it killed him.

Dick quashed all the white noise in his head and looked up. “You got your things?”

“Yeah,” Gardner prodded his bag with a foot. “We got separate lodgings. I thought he was paranoid, but remind me to tell Batman he was right when we get out of this.”

“I’ll pass on the message. Right. Put your stuff back: it’ll look suspicious if there are unplanned early departures the morning after an arrest. Then get over to Oliver and Shayera’s accommodation ASAP. Clear any incriminating tech, any other visas, things like that. Leave only normal traveller things. Get up to the Javelin later and make sure she’s ready to launch at a moment’s notice. Batman will have made sure he, Arrow and Hawkgirl had their spare cargo crew visas on them, so nothing can tie them back to the Javelin.” Dick rummaged through Huthor Brek’s luggage and unearthed Bruce’s portable safe, keying in the passcode and revealing the other documents and chips. “Of course they had to go out in full costume, but at least here it doesn’t look odd. Stay out of the way, Gardner. I’ll head to the Courts first thing and find out what’s going on. Don’t pull out the ring until shit has well and truly hit the fan.”

Gardner went, leaving Dick to sweep the room. By the time morning brightened the lights, they had everything stored in a rent-by-the-hour locker in the orbiting Dock Station terminal waiting to be taken up to the Javelin the next time the guard Batman had bribed on their arrival was on rotation.

“Get some sleep,” Gardner suggested. “I’ll get the stuff across to the ship and then head back to my room; it’s got a clear line of sight to Batman’s so I’ll keep a watch for any investigators.”

Dick nodded, and then went in the opposite direction once Gardner was out of sight. His eyes prickled with tiredness but the idea of sleep, now, when Bruce might need him, seemed more alien than any of the lizard-like beings shuffling past him. The fear simmering at the base of his spine made for an interesting addition to the cold bands of grief he was already intimately familiar with, and the whole sensation was not unlike a bad bout of flu sitting deep in his bones. Nothing to do but to push through it like always, keep working before he drowned.

Sector One was all brushed durasteel, glittering plasmaglass and sleek lines of blue-white light. Compared to the soaring spires of the biggest trade conglomerates’ headquarters reaching for the stars, the courthouse lurked low and menacing across two blocks, uninviting façade and imposing lines of security strongly suggesting the passers-by pass on by quickly.

Dick found himself a grimy diner a few streets away and ordered the stomach-searing espresso before searching the public pages for any arrests made overnight. An hour, three cups and a near-revolt on the part of his stomach later, Dick could find no trace of any reports from Sector Five that weren’t the usual bar-brawls.

“Are you sleeping?” Gardner demanded, and Dick jolted. Apparently his hand had answered the communication without permission from his brain.

“Um –”

“Well, wake up, I’ve been questioned.”

“ _What_?” Dick hissed, ducking in his seat and concealing his mouth with a hand.

“Yeah, precisely because my room has the sightline to Batman’s. They wanted to know if I’d seen or heard anything that would indicate abnormal behaviour. I told them I was too far enough away, and that I don’t make spying on neighbours a habit. They didn’t seem to have any idea we knew each other, either. It seemed routine; they were going on to check with the other neighbours. They scanned my entry visa, and it’s the same unconnected alias I’ve had in this sector of space for a while.”

“Thank god.” Dick slumped back, letting the tension leach out of his back. “Well, that’s our first hurdle over with. At least we know that they’re not looking for accomplices.”

“Speaking of, fellow accomplice, go the fuck to sleep.”

Dick laughed wearily and ended the call. Grinding the heels of his hands into his eyes, he conceded that a few hours’ sleep would at least pass the time if it was just bureaucracy that was delaying the notification. Sleep, at least sleep without dreams, had been his only solace during that year: each time he woke was a few more hours away from the shatterpoint of his life, a few hours’ respite from the grey desolation of his waking existence.

Back in his rooms, H’fwel giving him a nasty look on his way past that implied her disapproval of his irregular hours and haggard appearance, Dick drew on all that wretched experience and fell asleep without much effort. It was all the practice he’d had, he thought, thanks to Bruce being an asshole and getting into life-and-death situations at the drop of a hat.

While there were police quarters in every section, the confinement building and court house in Sector One was Dagatrix’s judicial epicentre and displayed in its lobby a large screen detailing the status of each ongoing case. Scanning the lines that afternoon, Dick chewed his lip anxiously as once again the trespassing arrest still remained absent. Maybe a spot of hacking would set his mind at ease, and he’d just reached the exit when the latest news reel commandeered the screens. Luckily Dick already had one hand on the door when tickertape reading, SECTOR FIVE PROVOST DISCOVERS TRACES OF ILLICIT THAFALSTRON IN UNREGISTERED WAREHOUSE, INVESTIGATION ENSUING, almost cut his knees out from under him.

“Green Lantern,” Dick croaked, a block away and tucked behind a dumpster. “Do you copy?”

“Nightwing, I was just about to call – you’ve seen it? Shit, man, shit, this is bad. Like, really bad.”

Dick caught the hysterical little laugh before it escaped: it was always a good idea to try and sound sane in a crisis. “Understatement,” he only said. “I’ve read the news article but there isn’t much in it. Crucially, it doesn’t make any mention of the engine components. It specifically says the warehouse was deserted, and registered to a floating company that has no real affiliations.”

“Yeah, I saw that,” Gardner agreed. “It’s our only saving grace. I’d say the smugglers got spooked by their security having to deploy and moved everything as soon as the warehouse was clear. Only trace amounts detected, the report says. Warranting further investigation, obviously, but they don’t have much to go on.”

“Not much, except for three unnamed witnesses apprehended for trespassing on that scene who are now assisting the provost’s judicial forces with their enquiries.” Dick was very proud of how steady his voice remained. “If they suspect the League of having anything to do with the warehouse, anything at all, the provost is going to hold them as long as possible. Under Dagatrix law, they don’t even need an excuse once _thafalstron_ enters the equation. Life detainment, here we come. I need to investigate the scene again, make sure there’s nothing incriminating remaining, nothing left of Batman’s hacks –”

“No,” interrupted Gardner. “I’ll go.”

“You don’t have any of the codes –”

“Then give them to me. Listen, if you’re seen in Sector One and then Sector Five as soon as the news breaks, it’s going to look bad. It’s early evening, too, and you don’t have any good excuse to be far from Sector Seven. You’ve been crisscrossing the whole space station; eventually someone is going to flag one of your chips and it’s going to draw more attention that we can afford at the moment. Look,” he added, trying for awkward compassion and succeeding, “I know you’re worried, but this is my League. These are my friends too. We won’t lose Batman again, alright?”

Shit, Dick thought, scrubbing at the prickling in his eyes – obviously a reaction to whatever was in the garbage bin next to him. “Don’t muck this up, Gardner.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Well, there was no point in boasting about better interpersonal skills than Batman if he refused to put those lauded talents to use. Sending Gardner the codes left Dick free to indulge in a more thorough investigation of the Dagatrician bail system late into the night.

Most of the options required time and capital, neither of which he had large amounts. It looked more and more likely he was going to have to opt for the encouragingly-named ‘plea-bargain:’ submit an application for a hearing, where he could speak and make the League’s case for them, or point out the lack of case, as it might be. Then a reprieve could be granted. If the case wasn’t serious, the plaintiffs could be released on bail and expected to remain available for further questioning and the eventual formal trial. Obviously Dick planned on running long before that, but it seemed so far to be the best of a bad bunch, even if the precedent for a plea-bargainer actually swaying the judge by a single speech remained worryingly small.

The infuriating alert Tim had rigged up broke him out of his headspace and Dick was sorely tempted to throw something, but knew himself well enough to realise that was – mostly – low blood sugar. God he missed his family. What he wouldn’t give to have Tim’s sharp mind, Jason’s indefatigable cunning, and Damian’s staunch determination bolster him up right about now, not to mention Alfred’s calming presence. He had to get Bruce back home to them. He had to.

Gardner called the next morning. “Everything’s as secure as I could make it,” he reported. “I couldn’t get close to the warehouse, it’s been quarantined for forensic testing, but I’m sure nothing of Batman’s patch job remains.”

“Thanks,” Dick sighed. “I’ve checked out the judicial force’s report, and it matches the news fairly closely. They seem to be focussing on the electronic trail of ownership for now, and if Batman found it in a few days they will too. There’s nothing tying the League to the site other than their physical presence, and I’ve managed to find their initial statements where they state they were walking home and unaware that the whole block was registered to a private corporation. The only suspicious circumstances are the blankness of the security footage and the League’s proximity, not to mention some gaps in the timeline since they’re using a walk home from a bar as their alibi. If we can post bail, clear up the alibi and forward some anonymous tips to point at Palnik Engines, we should – _should_ – be in the clear. I don’t think it’s exactly diplomatic to apply for bail and then actually flee the country, but we don’t have a choice. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise, I bring out the ring and we make this all sorts of bureaucratically official,” Gardner finished.

“I was going to say jail break, but that works too,” Dick said, only partially joking.

It took four long, fraught, fugue-like days for his application to submit an application for ‘fiscally-induced regulated absence from custody’ to be accepted.

“Just call it bail,” Dick sighed, and then called Gardner. “The hearing is in another four days’ time,” he said. “I just got the approval. You can pay for dinner, since I’ve just bankrupted myself with the extortionate fees for an expedited process.”

“And are you sure that submitting the thing in person is a good idea?”

“This being the thirteenth time you’ve asked, yes. I am sure. The fact that they’ve even agreed to a hearing is a good sign that the authorities don’t consider the League to be viable suspects in this investigation, and I’ve sent them anonymous titbits about Palnik Engines that they’ve started acting on. I very much doubt Brainiac is involved – in fact, I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s not – and Batman has a different visa now than he had when he arrived so there’s nothing linking me to him except species so _yes, I am absolutely sure that I trust myself with this process and I am doing it_.”

There was a silence over the line. “Just making sure Batman isn’t going to have my head for letting you break cover,” Gardner sulked.

“Sorry, Guy,” Dick repented, kneading the bridge of his nose. “And trust me, he’s far more likely to go for my head than yours. Are you going to be at the hearing?”

“Well, we’ve all pretty much blown ‘covert mission, do not engage’ clear out of the water, so why not. You might need backup.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. If they agree to bail, we’re going to need to move to the Javelin as quickly as possible without raising suspicion that we’re, you know, actually skipping town. Maybe we can arrange for the biometric readers in the terminal to have technical issues so we can get up to the space dock without alerting the authorities. Shit, maybe they’ll have subdermal trackers. I’ll have to find a way to hack –”

“Man, I’m never going to be allowed anywhere near this section of space again,” Gardner moaned, thoroughly derailing Dick’s rush-hour express from its tracks. “They do the best Salosian Stir-fry this side of the Ulippa system at this little place down in Sector Four…I’m really going to miss it.”

“If you want to stay for the stir-fry and risk having to eat it behind bars for the rest of your life, be my guest,” Dick said sweetly, and Gardner snorted.

“Wow, you really are related to him.”

“Not by blood,” he snapped reflexively.

“Alright, alright,” Gardner sighed, giving up. “What do you want for dinner?”

* * *

Waiting outside the hearing room in tiny, uncomfortable seats as the time ticked well past the appointed hour improved neither of their tempers, but since Dick and Gardner were pretending not to know each other and the other eleven beings dotted about the corridor looked about as eager to make small talk as brick walls, they had no one on whom they could take out their tensions. The Lantern just shifted about every so often, sighing heavily as he flicked through a magazine, and Dick’s jaw grew tighter as he tinkered with his translator matrix until he could almost feel Alfred’s reflexive shudder, jiggling his knee and tapping his heel in retaliation for Gardner’s obnoxious exhalations. He stopped pretty swiftly when he noticed the manticore eye his foot with something disturbingly like hunger.

Finally, three hours late, the screen outside the room announced it was Case 25PB-675890: Application for Fiscal-Induced Regulated Absence from Custody re. Case 25PSH-775890. Dick stood to meet the harassed official while Gardner and five of the other aliens wandered over to the cramped public viewing area.

Dick went over his application paperwork for the fourth time since he’d arrived at the court this morning before being allowed to enter the room. The space resembled a large auditorium rather than a courtroom, with a high dais for the judge’s desk in front of a sunken, railed area for the accused, and four tiers of benches rising around the room with allocated space for security, the clerk, the charmingly-titled plea-bargainer, other witnesses and non-associated spectators. Dick sat in his spot and counted his breaths as the clerk dithered with his records and the spectators murmured and the bored bailiff chewed his moustache-tentacles, but at long last the bailiff received some sort of signal.

The Leaguers were escorted in through a side door, cuffed at ankle and wrist, and Dick’s breath shuddered in abject relief at the familiar fulminating set to Bruce’s bare, beloved mouth, cowl still intact. Clutching his hands in his lap, Dick managed a faint smile in response to the glare Bruce directed at him almost immediately and then ignored everything but the security arrangements until the bailiff bade the room to rise in a resigned monotone.

“All welcome Zir Honour Judge Ooodah Jak, presiding over Case 25PB-675890: Application for Fiscal-Induced Regulated Absence from Custody re. Case 25PSH-775890.”

The plum-coloured tripedal being shuffled ponderously in and busied zirself with the screens and computers at the dais while the room settled itself.

“Hearing 25PB-675890 is now in session,” said the clerk. “Present your case, plea-bargainer.”

Dick stood. “Your Honour,” he said, and repeated the honorific in Dagatrician, bowing slightly. “I have come to bargain for the regulated absence of these three defendants with a fiscal inducement made through the Dagatrician Court.”

The judge scrutinised Dick and then looked down at the screens. “Who are you to stand?”

“I am Robbie Perisher. They are crew members aboard a ship belonging to a friend of mine.” Dick gestured to the fake manifest he’d forwarded on to the court. “Thus in this sector, my friend has asked me to assume responsibility for their fair trial. They have not been charged and there are no grounds to incarcerate them. I ask that they be granted absence to see to their affairs in the time the court reviews their case.”

Judge Ooodah Jak indicated the Leaguers. “Their statements make no reference to you.”

“They wouldn’t,” Dick replied. “They had no way of knowing their employer Hix would contact me. They do not know me.” He’d responded to the alert sent to Starstream Cargo as both the fictional Captain Hix and as Robbie Perisher of Kolkyx VI, and had had Gardner muddy the transmission to make it authentic.

“You are here as a representative of Starstream Cargo?”

“Authorised to act on behalf of Starstream Cargo, but not otherwise employed by them,” Dick answered, careful to make sure the technicalities were translated properly.

“They are not ideal crewmen, to be arrested for trespassing.”

“I humbly object to that phrase, Your Honour. They were not in the warehouse, only near, and the issue of whether the private security force was within their authority to arrest them is included in my plea.”

“A security alert was activated shortly before their arrest.”

“With no evidence confirming their responsibility.”

“Starstream has never traded in _thafalstron_?” The judge fired the query at Dick with the same speed as the other questions, the translator just keeping up.

“Never,” Dick said, looking appropriately aghast. “The company is well aware of Dagatrix’s policy.”

“So you say this crew has nothing to do with _thafalstron_?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Why were they near a warehouse containing indications of this restricted substance?”

Dick felt something cold shiver down his spine. “Your Honour, how could I, or they, possibly know the contents of an unregistered warehouse?”

“This court takes the improper trade of _thafalstron_ very seriously.”

“Of course.” He hoped a small bow wouldn’t go astray. “I trust nothing will escape this court’s investigation.”

The judge stared at the transcripts of the League’s testimonies again. “All available assets will be utilised.”

“But some assets have nothing but accidental proximity to bring them to this court’s attention. Such tenuous evidence is surely not worth the expense, thus my application for fiscally-induced absence from custody.”

“That remains to be judged.”

The rotund judge flicked through various screens and Dick tried to hold onto the hope that this would all blow over, but as the minutes ticked on and the judge returned time and again to the two pages detailing the timeline of the night, the heavier the dread in the pit of his stomach grew.

Finally, zie looked up. “I do not find sufficient cause for release. Any smuggling of _thafalstron_ is a grievous crime. The alien interlopers must be further investigated. Inter them until their guilt can be determined, and if no progress or cooperation is achieved, mental examination is advised.” Ooodah Jak rapped the gavel down with a sharp, decisive bang.

“No!” Dick shouted, protest torn from him despite himself and both bailiff and judge glared as the spectators chittered and gawked. “Your Honour, please, reconsider!” Gardner was shouting too from the opposite side but was just as ineffectual, and even if he put on his ring the Green Lantern wasn’t guaranteed to be of any use. The judge began to close down the screens and the guards were approaching the Leaguers, preparing to lead them back to their holding cell; Queen was arguing, shackled hands sweeping the air like he was willing his quiver into existence by the mere fact of shaping it, and the onlookers just oohed at the drama.

 _No_. This was reality, a matter of life and death, of Bruce’s life _again_ and Dick could do something about it this time, heart hammering in his chest as plans were made, discarded, what what what could he do, what could he use, guards, keys, cuffs –

Drastic times called for dramatic measures.

He caught Gardner’s eye and jabbed a finger at the ceiling, and then plunged forward as Gardner bolted from the room. The guards, used to unruly crowds, didn’t pay either of them any special attention until Dick managed to vault down over the barricade and bolt across the floor towards the judge’s dais. He made it halfway before two peeled away from the pack surrounding the four Leaguers and tried to subdue him; Dick evaded them and continued toward the judge. “Your Honour, please!”

“Nightwing, go!” he thought he heard Bruce shout, but sudden surge in the noise of the crowd made it easy to ignore him.

“Being, cease your struggle,” snapped the captain of the squad, identifiable thanks to the brocade on her shoulder, as she finally took advantage of the gap in his defence and latched on to Dick’s upper arm. He bared his teeth and lunged into her, knocking the captain down and prompting the bailiff to summon a fresh contingent from the barracks. The additional six guards finally restrained him, twisting his arms behind his back and forcing Dick to his knees in front of the judge’s dais.

The magistrate stared disdainfully at him. Dick didn’t waste a moment; ignoring the ache in his shoulders he scrambled for the pitiful amount of Dagatrician he’d learnt and took a deep, desperate breath.

“ _Exalted, please, I beg your ear to listen_!”

Ooodah Jak looked mildly interested and held up one of zir hands to prevent the guards from dragging Dick away. Dick wasn’t entirely sure what the stream of guttural syllables meant – the words were spoken to the clerk and not to the translator waiting on the corner of the bench – but he thought he caught ‘good tongue’ and wet his lips desperately. That he was trying to speak their language without a translator was evidently a point in Dick’s favour but he was missing a few vocal chords, a spur of bone and a throat pouch; suddenly the fate of the Leaguers’ immediate future rested on his simple human tongue and it was dry and clumsy and afraid. He’d been brought along for his technological skill with the translators, and here he was, with nothing but his voice to recommend him in front of the courts.

He swallowed and moistened his lips again.

“ _I beg a tick_ ,” he began, “ _a piece of time to say_ _goodbye!_ ”

“Unnecessary.”

“ _No, it is_!” Dick insisted. “ _It is, it is of need, I have not seen him in so many days, I begged Captain Hix to send me when came to us the alert, he is my_ …” he trailed off, mouth dry and heart in his throat as he searched feverishly for the words he needed. “ _He is of me, he is mine, one-who-shares-tax_.” No, not the right word, the terms for partners, even co-workers, were buried in prefixes and suffices delineating who owned what asset, god he’d never be able to do this!

Couldn’t think like that. New direction, not the position but the principle. “ _He is thing-which-is-cherished, starbright, treasured, precious, jewel._ ” At least their economy lent itself to pretty words for expensive things, and though the sharp edges of the guttural syllables caught at his throat the judge seemed to be reacting to his meaning. “ _I beg a goodbye, I claim the thing-which-is-due, the partnered – I beg to the court it be pleasing to grant this, one tick, please…for the love-place of me…_ ” Wrong conjugation and his mouth was so dry his throat was clicking but he was getting closer, he knew that word. “ _For my heart’s loved place, please!_ ”

The room was still as he stumbled and stuttered his way to the end of his hoarse plea, and when Dick finished the weighty silence hung like an anvil over his head. The judge stared down at him, impassive, and Dick’s unsteady breathing was the loudest thing in the room.

“One minute,” Judge Ooodah Jak ruled, and Dick crumpled in relief. The guards restraining him were the only things keeping him upright; when they released him Dick had to catch himself on the floor as he pressed the other trembling hand to his mouth. When he climbed to his feet a moment later, he was still shaking and the stretch of floor between them seemed unending in the heavy stillness of the courtroom. He didn’t know how much of that the other Leaguers understood but Dick couldn’t risk any of them asking about it or expressing their surprise; he didn’t pause as he shouldered his way past the guards surrounding the League and strode straight over to Batman, couldn’t hesitate as he cupped Bruce’s face in his hands and kissed him.

Bruce was utterly still beneath his lips but Dick didn’t let it deter him; fear for Bruce’s life overruled everything except a precious second of coveted pleasure that was the warmth of Bruce’s mouth as Dick opened his to Bruce’s. God, this was a poor simulacrum of something he’d craved for so many years, flavoured with fear and adrenaline, and yet the hot flash of tongue and a split-second of cold behind Bruce’s teeth as he pushed into his mouth was a kiss that sent electricity from his head to his heart to his toes.

The impatient tugs on his arms where the guards still held him drew him back at last, and the moment Dick’s lips parted from Bruce’s he felt bereft.

“Hangar five,” he whispered into the space between them as the guards yanked him away.

“Be satisfied, sky-person,” the judge said. “Take them.”

The League was marched away, the spectators gaped and chattered and stared, and Dick was dropped in a crumpled heap in an empty service corridor behind the hearing room.

“Get out,” one guard commanded, kicking him once in the ribs for good measure and bending down to get his faceplate up close. “If we see you again you can join them down there in the cell even the wardens forget about.”

The others laughed, and the steady tromp of boots faded as the guards made their way back into the courtroom.

They hadn’t even searched his pockets, and the corridor was deserted. Did they _want_ to be hacked? The service and janitorial passageways were even on a closed-circuit network, and the access port was right there by a junction lightbox, a little black dot and a tiny keycard slot like an unimpressed cyclops. Dick shook out the last of the mostly-theatrical shudders and got to work.

 & & & &

They were thrown roughly into a cell barely big enough for three, with just enough space for Green Arrow to stand once he had regained his balance from the guards’ malicious shove.

“Say goodbye to open air,” jeered one, pushing his gloating colleague out of the door ahead of him. “It will be a very long time before you see it again.”

The door clanged shut, the locks snapped closed and the slow hum of hydraulics warming up rumbled through the cell. Batman ignored the machinery and pressed his ear against the door.

“They're going to drop us down to the lower dungeon,” whispered Arrow, trying not to look horrified at the thought and failing.

“Would you care to explain that?” Hawkgirl snapped at Batman, wings twitching and brushing against the wall each time she moved.

“What?” he asked facetiously, still straining to hear if the guards had left yet to go and coordinate the process from the control room. “What part of this mess do you want me to explain?”

She glared at him, and Bruce’s lips knew exactly what she was talking about.

“They’ve gone,” he said instead. “We have about a minute before they drop us.”

“And that helps us _how_?”

Bruce smiled, sudden and viciously triumphant. Held between his bared teeth was the guard captain’s tiny keychip to the inhibitor collars.

& & & &

Subtlety was by this time well and truly fucked: Dick sprinted through the complex, dodging clerks and bailiffs and bystanders as he went, line open.

“This is such a fucking nightmare,” Gardner was moaning, “Oa must never ever find out about this or I am dead, I am rancor chow, I am sewage maintenance _forever_.”

“Oh, stop whining,” Dick snapped, clearing the courthouse and bolting down Sector One’s main street. “Is the Javelin ready?”

“I’m just waiting for you, engines and docking are standing by – and you have no idea how much I had to pay for the jump in docking line! Seriously, I’ll be bankrupt by the end of this!”

“I’m sorry, I thought the lives of your teammates was slightly – get out of my way! – more important than your wallet, but by all means – move if you don’t want to be run over – submit an invoice to petty fucking cash.”

“You’re a bit tetchy,” observed Gardner, with great omniscience.

“ _You_ _think_?” Dick slammed into the toilets of the Transport Hub and ignoring the protests pushed past the line and slipped into the janitor’s closet at the end of the room. Changing on a time limit was so ingrained by now that Dick had once won Tim’s dessert for a month after his brother had wagered he couldn’t do it under thirty seconds, and when he emerged in the luggage belt engine room by way of a tiny access tunnel behind the bathrooms Robbie Perisher had become Senavan O’Hare, complete with red hair, goatee and brown eyes.

“I’m beaming up,” he told Gardner, waving his first class pass at the glaring line and grabbing the next terminal. “ETA?”

“Nothing y – oh, praise Oa! Batman’s just signalled! They’re in Hangar Five of the courthouse!”

Dick couldn’t suppress a shuddering sigh, but it was a brief lapse. Shoving his second identity’s visa into the scanner, he continued his whispered instructions and stood still, counting every second slipping away. “Interface the Javelin’s systems with the court’s and scramble the communication channels; my hack won’t hold forever. Bypass security and open program Epsilon Two, then enter the following passcode: golf lima five seven one. The Dagatrician site-to-site emergency zeta platforms should be online.” Grabbing his bag and chip, Dick strode towards the Arrivals’ Hall, _one-hundred-and-sixty-eight, one-hundred-and-sixty-nine, one-hundred-and-seventy, one-hundred-and-seventy-one_ …

“Yes, got it! Coordinates for the Javelin’s cargo bay locked in.”

“It’ll take a few seconds, and my hack is not going to last much longer. I’m coming up now, open the airlock door and standby for take-off. Ready to haul ass, Mr. Gardner?”

“Batman doesn’t let me fly this baby enough, I’m gonna burn rubber like it’s the last thing I’ll do.”

“It may very well be,” Dick muttered, waiting for the rush of zeta beam, waiting with fear cramping the pit of his stomach for someone to shout, _stop him!_ or for the computer to freeze and deny him access, for Gardner to tell him the Dagatrician security had locked him out, recaptured the Leaguers, what were they going to do now?

His hack held and nothing stopped him. Materialising on the Docking Station without incident, Dick sprinted down the passageway to the Javelin’s bay, heart hammering in his chest. “Close the airlock and disengage docking clamps,” he ordered. “Are the others aboard?”

“Yes, so get a move on!”

Leaping through the closing airlock, Dick thought, was better than simply getting a move on, and he shouted, “Punch it!” just in time to see the cargo door open and _thank god thank god_ the three Leaguers stride out in one piece.

Gardner obeyed with alacrity, and anything Batman might have said was lost as the ship tilted sharply to starboard, floor and walls vibrating with the strain of the engine pulling away from the artificial gravity of the space station. “Buckle up back there,” the Lantern shouted cheerfully, and Dick strapped himself in before the acceleration could plaster him like so much attractive Nightwing wallpaper to the back wall. “Everyone in one piece?”

“You won’t be if you fracture the new coolant system,” Batman barked.

“Ah, Bats, good to have you back,” Gardner said over the intercom, safe to caress the controls alone in the cockpit. “Doesn’t she handle like a dream? Arrow, Hawkgirl, you there too?”

“Astonishingly, yeah,” Oliver agreed, saluting Dick. “It’s a happy surprise, but definitely a surprise.”

“I’m never going near that section of space again,” Shayera replied, clinging to the harness as the Javelin rode the concussive waves of the hyperspeed highway.

“Amen,” Gardner agreed fervently. “We’re an hour away from Jump Gate Two and so far no pursuit on our tail but the seatbelt signs haven’t been switched off and our lovely hostess won’t be able to serve drinks any time soon. Sit tight; as soon as we get through the Jump Gate we’ll haul ass through a nebula desert to lose any trackers and then pop back through Jump Gate Six for a charming eight hours’ smooth sailing back to our own humble solar system.”

Even Batman didn’t test his balance against the turbulence of the hyperspeed lane and Dick breathed easier, finally letting the fear and adrenaline ebb from his body. _Fuck_. That was too close, too goddamn close after just getting Bruce back. God, he was going to have nightmares for _weeks_ and Babs would give him that knowing look every damn time. Maybe he’d just get Tim to ask Conner to ask Luthor for a Motherbox; really, it seemed like the simplest option for transporting out of tight spots, if, of course, you didn’t mind the possibility of one turning on you and integrating flesh and technology in its master’s hunt for parademon slaves.

Oh yes, and he’d kissed Bruce. He’d kissed Bruce in front of Oliver Queen, who knew them both; he’d kissed Batman in front of a whole system of aliens who could one day use that against them; he’d kissed Bruce as a way to save him and Bruce was never going to let him near him again.

“Nightwing…” Batman said a minute later, and Dick shut his eyes, settling back in his seat.

“I’m going to sleep. That was not the most pleasant week of my life, thank you very much. See I ever come with you off-world again.”

“That would be a damned shame,” Oliver said cheerfully. “You were the one who spotted the Palnik connection. Don’t know how bored you were to look that deeply into lines of code, but I’m not complaining. Not only that, but you saved our necks.”

“Pshaw,” Dick said, waving a hand. “No problem. I mean, I’d really prefer not to have to do that again, but I probably will sooner rather than later. Trouble really does find you wherever you go.”

“Not on purpose this time,” sighed Shayera.

Dick snorted, and dug out his last travel pill. If Bruce stared any longer he was going to bore through Dick’s skull, though this time Dick couldn’t tell without looking if he was still thinking about what happened in the courtroom, or trying to express his disapproval of Dick’s intention to chemically induce slumber.

Dick upended his water canister defiantly, and waited for sleep to come.

Unfortunately, given the amount of poisons, venoms, toxins, antidotes, and plain weird shit floating around in Dick’s bloodstream, over-the-counter sleeping pills were rarely good enough to actually do anything. Instead, Dick floated in a fog, dozing for stretches of time but peripherally aware of his surroundings, coming around every so often when something sharp pierced the daze. He could tell when they’d reached the Jump Gate, felt when the Javelin punched through the space/time-bending shortcut, slept fitfully through the increased pressure and plasma discharges of the compressed tunnel, and knew when they’d broke through the Gate at the other end. It was easier to drift, after that, even if Dick was vaguely aware of people moving around him, speaking softly to each other, the rasp of Bruce’s voice in that tone where he didn’t want to talk about something…

Gardner’s announcement that they were back in their section of space finally woke him, along with Oliver barrelling like a rhinoceros into the cockpit to relay a firsthand account of his jailbreak to Dinah. Stretching and scrubbing wearily at his face, Dick winkled his nose at his stubble and the wig still on his head, looking forward more than words could express to his own shower and his own bed. At least the toilets in Dagatrix had been vaguely recognisable, but even the recycled system of the Javelin was a relief and he pulled off the wig and slipped out the contacts with a pleased sigh.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, though, exhaustion fled his mind as quickly as thugs before Superman: Batman was waiting in the corridor outside, as gothic and grim as a gargoyle. Dick stared at him, stomach clenching, and turned on his heel into a nearby weapons’ locker.

“Nightwing, you took an unacceptable risk,” snapped Batman, waiting only until the door had closed before beginning his tirade.

“Oh, so we’re doing this now,” Dick said, not turning around.

“Yes, we damn well are. Not only have we painted a target on the League’s backs across a whole damn system, you deliberately drew attention to yourself. You were never supposed to be involved! You were to run a second autonomous covert mission and _stay away from us_. We would have escaped or let due process run its course, but now we have the judicial system of a whole section after us and after you.”

“They don’t even know me,” snapped Dick, whipping around at the injustices hurled at his head, “and for your information my hack overrode the site-to-site transporters and nothing else. The system still shows your false identities imprisoned, and unless you made a fucking mess of breaking out they shouldn’t be any the wiser for a while more.”

“ _Should_ is not good enough.”

“Oh, well, excuse me for trying to save your goddamned _life_! What was I supposed to do, leave you to rot?”

“Yes, if necessary!” Batman shouted back, taking one step forward and holding clenched fists by his sides. “You disregarded the covert nature of the mission and put yourself in unacceptable danger!”

“Oh, _fuck you_ ,” Dick snarled, taking an answering step forward, toe to toe and face to face, suddenly incandescent with rage at Bruce’s persistent disregard for his own safety. “Don’t you fucking dare, Batman, don’t you even – this isn’t about me, this is about you! There is nothing in this universe that could make me walk away when your stupid life was in danger, though I shouldn’t be surprised at your cavalier self-destructive tendencies; god knows I’ve put up with them every single bloody day I’ve been besides you on the streets! Don’t you dare tell me I should have left you when you were asinine enough to get arrested! I did everything I could to get you and the League back without resorting to an actual heist and I _will not_ apologise for that. If you wanted to waste away in an alien prison hundreds of lightyears from home then I don’t know you anymore. Do you think we could have lost you again, Bruce?”

He was panting now, shaking with anger and the afterimage of that ever-present aching grief, voice breaking and hoarse in the last sentence and feeling no triumph when he realised Batman’s breathing was just as unsteady as Dick’s own. His hands twitched, restless and unsure, and Dick obeyed the impulse, reaching up, expecting a sharp rebuff…Bruce let him disarm and pull the cowl off.

For a moment, nothing but the hum of the engine disturbed the space between them, but then Bruce opened his mouth and Dick could just tell from the edge in Bruce’s eyes that no concession was forthcoming.

“That’s the way the mission –”

Dick shoved past him, teeth bared, and stormed out of the weapons’ locker, heading further into the storage section and away from the audience in the cabin.

Bruce, of course, because he was as stubborn as Dick and much worse at interpersonal skills, went after him. It was only because he called after Dick, and not Nightwing, that Dick overcame the desire to slam the door of one of the sleeping quarters in Bruce’s face. The room was one of the larger ones, which wasn’t saying much: they were still only a few feet from each other, chests heaving, fists clenched, alley cats with fur standing on end.

“If you’re angry about key thing, it’s not like I had a lot to work with at the time. I’m sorry if it offended you but I’m not sorry – I will never be sorry – for saving your life!”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair, such an uncharacteristic gesture of uncertainty that Dick felt momentarily off-balance. “It’s not that – I didn’t consider that, but you risked yourself to do it –”

And it shouldn’t hurt, it really, really shouldn’t, and yet, still…Dick turned away, flinging his arms up like he had an orchestra awaiting, ready to accompany this clusterfuck of a saga. “Oh wonderful, perfect, don’t consider it, that’s fine, but I sure as hell am not apologising again and if it was the only one I’ll ever get –”

Dick’s jaw snapped shut so hard he thought he’d fractured a tooth, and the sudden vacuous silence was so oppressive he thought his eardrums might rupture too. Neither of them seemed to be breathing.

“Dick?” Bruce ventured almost a minute later, and the breath whooshed back into Dick’s lungs as he busied himself setting the time on his watch.

“It’s nothing, forget it – better yet, disregard it, you’re good at that. Which time zone are we in? Is the Javelin’s system right?”

“What do you mean,” Bruce asked carefully, oh-so-carefully, like he was handling a bomb between them, “if it’s the only one?”

Dick almost laughed; would have, if the awful shards in his lungs weren’t clogging up his throat. “Well, you’ve never been particularly desirous of interpersonal relationships, have you? Or of relationships in general. Half the time you’re pushing me away and the other half you’re blaming me for doing things my own way when you were the one to kick me out, and I can live without you, Bruce. I’ve done it before. I just don’t want to do it again. I was Batman, and I was damn good at it and I never wanted to be, I just wanted you safe even if I couldn’t have you, I just wanted to know you were home in Gotham even when we weren’t talking and then you were _dead_ , Bruce, you were gone; do you know what that did to me? To us? Why are we even talking about this, you should go and make sure the radio signals are cloaked and no-one’s tracking the exhaust emissions –”

He made to push past Bruce again, throat aching and eyes stinging, but his arm was caught in a bruising grip and – Bruce’s eyes were blazing like no star Dick had ever seen.

“Don’t you dare – don’t ever think – the only way I could get through some nights was knowing you were out there living your own life, better than I ever could be,” and Dick was swung around, boxed in against the wall with one hand still around his bicep and the other pressed beside his head as Bruce searched his face with an expression that Dick had never seen before and couldn’t read. His voice was rough and hoarse, but not with the grit of Gotham street nights. “Don’t say you were waiting for me, don’t, you deserve better, you have always deserved better, don’t you see? Someone normal who can give you everything –”

“You – you –” anger and shock and oh such crushing hope swept through him, “you idiot! What would I do with someone _normal_? What would I do with someone with a nine to five job and a dog and white picket fence? What would I say when I got home at four in the morning, bleeding across the kitchen floor? How many dates would I miss because the call came in or the Batsignal turned on, or because Damian called me in a snip with Tim over who could ruin the shrubbery the most with your grandfather’s katanas? If even Babs, who lives and breathes this life just as much as I do, called it quits because y– the mission always came first, what chance do you honestly think I’ll have with anyone else? Bruce, it’s always been you.”

He returned Bruce’s grip, finally staring straight at him and willing him to understand.

“You died, Bruce,” he said, empty as all those long nights. “You were dead, and all at once I was utterly alone. I went to your _funeral_. I know we’ve all had near-death experiences, we’ve all had lungs and hearts stop for one reason or another and every time it’s tortuous because what if this is it? Bruce, that was it. You were gone, and we had to carry on. I had to carry on. You know when it really hit? Not with that whole mess about the cowl; it was about five weeks after your – you went missing, and I was the Cave reading something about the dignitaries invited to a gala we thought the Penguin was planning to infiltrate and I looked up to ask you something, and I realised I would never see you again.”

Despite himself, his throat seized as that moment rushed over Dick once more, and Bruce shifted slightly under his hands. “And then you came back,” he breathed, tightening his grip. “You were _alive_ and home and you have no idea what that was like. Don’t ever ask me to leave you when I have a chance to save you.”

Stripped bare, raw and absolutely maskless, Dick couldn’t hold Bruce’s eyes. They breathed, unsteady and unsynchronised, until he couldn’t stand it, until staying stagnant and shocked in that spot any longer was unbearable. He straightened and stepped carefully around Bruce, stopping only by the door to say quietly,

“I’m not sorry for saving you, but I am sorry for springing that on you. Please don’t –” again his throat betrayed him, but Dick could only swallow and try again, the pillars of his world teetering like dominoes ready to bring it down in ruins around him. “Please don’t freak out. I can’t lose you to something so stupid as my own feelings. What a waste that whole speech would be.”

He walked back to his seat with even steps, steady and controlled so not even a draught would tip the dominoes further. He sat, buckled himself in, and closed his eyes once more, desperate to fall into thoughtless black before the Javelin smashed headlong into a supernova or something else appropriately world-ending.

Docking at the Watchtower seven hours later was perhaps not exactly worth Oliver Queen falling to his knees and kissing the hangar bay floor, but it was close. Nightwing, though, walked straight past the group gathered to meet them, ignoring questions about their delay, and locked himself in a small meeting room to finish compiling his report. It didn’t take long, and he escaped to the zeta platforms before anyone could corner him and ask for a verbal version. Thirty minutes later, he was unlocking his front door; thirty-five, he was in a blisteringly hot shower; forty, he was in bed with every safeguard he could think of informing the world, and his nosy family especially, in capital letters to GO AWAY and LET ME SLEEP.

Dark dreams and hazy nightmares lurked at the edges but he was tired and heartsore enough to fall back asleep after each jolt, and when he woke in the morning he couldn’t remember much at all.

Waking up was not the same as getting out of bed, but eventually the faint aroma of coffee and the promise of another hot shower and a shave were more appealing than wallowing miserably in a blanket burrito, and when Dick emerged refreshed and dressed half an hour later, he felt solidly and blissfully _human_ once more.

Pulling a mug down from the cupboard, Dick turned around and promptly dropped it to shatter on the tiles at the sight of Bruce standing awkwardly by his kitchen counter, a steaming pot of coffee ready next to him.

“Shit!” he yelped, very unprofessionally, leaping back.

“Dick!” Bruce said, lurching forward very ungracefully. “Where’s your dustpan?”

“I just slept ten hours, I should not be hallucinating,” he croaked, staring as Bruce opened a few cupboards helplessly and then knelt to pick up the larger shards of porcelain. “And I know I set all my alarms.”

“You’re not,” Bruce replied, stilted. “And you did. I – bypassed them. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh. That’s rude.”

“I – I didn’t know if you’d open the door to me.”

Bruce stood, and they stared at each other, the pieces of the mug cupped in Bruce’s hands between them.

“You’re not hallucinating,” Bruce said again, eyes flicking between Dick’s. “I just – you – I’ve thought –”

Dick blinked at the unparalleled incoherence. “What even – for god’s sake,” he sighed, and brought the bin to Bruce before grabbing another mug and pouring himself some coffee. Nothing was making sense, and nothing would make sense until he got some proper caffeine into his bloodstream. Bruce shifted on his feet nearby in uncharacteristic discomfort; Dick’s heart did something complicated at how out of place Bruce seemed to be in the little blue-tiled kitchen.

Halfway through the cup, Dick woke up enough to add sugar, fridge bare of all other essentials, and propped himself back in one corner of the kitchen, watching as Bruce did the same in the other.

“So,” he said levelly at last. “Not a hallucination. To what do I owe the pleasure this time? It is going to take far, far more than just a ‘please’ to get me to go on another League off-world mission.”

Bruce glanced at him and then away, hands sliding into his trouser pockets. He was wearing the civilian clothes he kept up in his suite on the Watchtower, which Dick – Dick did not know how he felt about.

“It – you did good work. I should have said. Without you, the situation would have been much more complicated.”

Dick nodded carefully, mug held in both hands, warmth soaking into his palms and clay reassuringly solid under trembling fingers. “Thank you.”

“The reports have all been collated, and Superman has agreed that Brainiac was not involved. The Lanterns aren’t overly pleased by the way we left Dagatrix, but they have acknowledged it to be a diplomatically hostile environment and out of their jurisdiction anyway.”

Dick nodded, heart thumping painfully in his chest.

“A signal scrambler has been transmitted to our outer satellites, to block any tracers sent this far through the Jump Gates. We’re not expecting pursuit, but Tornado recommended it as a precaution.”

Dick nodded, finishing the last of his coffee with sharp little swallows. He put down the mug only to look up and find Bruce right in front of him, straightened reflexively only to stumble as Bruce slipped an arm tight around his waist, and opened his mouth to question only to gasp as Bruce’s kiss consumed him.

Fierce, hot and deep, no preliminaries; Bruce’s lips over his, Bruce’s tongue in his mouth with no keycard to smuggle across, like he was trying to unlock things between them with no breath left for words. Dick froze –

The gentle touch of fingertips to his jaw, a palm against his racing pulse, anchored him. Dick wrapped his arms around Bruce’s shoulders and hung on, kissed back as ardently as he could with his lungs already protesting. He practically laminated himself to Bruce’s body, thighs hips chest all aligned with no space between them, nothing but clothes that could easily be dispensed with. He arched even further into Bruce with a startled moan as a large, calloused hand pressed against the small of his back under his t-shirt, moaned again as Bruce rumbled deep in his chest at a nip Dick bestowed on his lower lip. Bruce’s hair wasn’t long enough for any sort of grip but Dick ran his hand through it all the same, endorphins coursing through his veins and heart about to explode into fireworks bright enough to be seen from the Watchtower with no idea why –

Forcing his arms between them, Dick dragged his aching mouth far back enough to gasp,

“Bruce, what –? Why are –?”

He could feel Bruce trying to withdraw and dug his fingers into jacket and shoulder indiscriminately, hooking an ankle around a calf just in case. They listed against a cabinet, breathing unevenly, and part of Dick, especially the part without a capital letter, were screaming at him for stopping, but the others…he couldn’t afford to get this wrong, mistake this for something else, misunderstand what was going on.

“I just,” Bruce whispered, eyes darting to Dick’s red mouth and away with a sort of terrified hunger. “Dick, I –” he stopped again, and released Dick’s hip to rub a hand over his face.

Dick loosened his grip and stepped back until they were side by side, hands close enough to be brushing on the counter but not quite. Any closer and those unsteady dominoes would be caught in the tremors.

“I’m not good with words,” Bruce said into the quiet, and Dick snorted before he could stop himself. “Yes, you of all people are well aware – you, of all people, deserve more than I can possibly give.”

“Bruce, no,” the words were almost punched out of him.

“Let me,” Bruce ploughed ahead. “Let me. But you always do, and I rely too much on that, too much on you. My compass, Dick, and such a burden I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.”

“God, I wouldn’t give the Joker your compass,” Dick quipped, but weakly. “Sorry.” He slid closer to Bruce’s side, though, fear and hope warring inside him, the coffee sitting in his empty uncertain stomach nearly making him sick. “You could never, _ever_ , be a burden.”

“But I am. This Mission is –”

“Nope, not letting you even go there. I chose this. I chose Robin. I’ve never regretted that. We’ve been over this, Bruce, ad nauseam.”

Bruce leant his head back against the cupboards, sighing. “You’re so stubborn.”

“Uh, how long have you know me?”

“Almost half your life.”

The weight was back on Bruce’s shoulders, but Dick at least knew why. “Don’t. My feelings aren’t your fault, or your responsibility. You’ve let me – made me, and I do know why you did – live my own life, and I’ve always made my own choices. You did nothing but be…” Again with the throat seizing up, he must be allergic to feelings. “You did nothing but be the best man I’ve ever known.”

The sudden grip on his fingers was so tight it was painful, but Dick latched on, heart overflowing. “Your feelings aren’t stupid,” Bruce said hoarsely. “On the Javelin, you said you didn’t want to lose me because of your feelings. Dick, I thought I was going to lose you because of the same. I nearly did. But I could never let you go, not far, even when it would have been better for you. No, I know,” he barrelled onward, obviously sensing Dick’s interruption. “But you have always been better than anything I could ever be, or even imagine. Don’t blame me for wanting the best for you.”

“But you are the best for me,” Dick whispered, “don’t you see? We’re never going to let each other go, Bruce. We can be so good together. We’ve been so miserable apart, there’s really no other option now.”

Bruce huffed something distantly related to a wry laugh. “Life gets in the way.”

It was sort of true, but it lanced directly into Dick’s heart and he hissed, chest aching.

“Dick, no, I didn’t – that was tactless.”

“No, I just –” he breathed past the old grief, careful not to tear his lungs on the ragged edges. “Sorry. I know what you meant, but at this stage…I understand that the mission has to come first. There isn’t any other way I know how to live my life by now; you know that and I know that. Batman and Nightwing will always be there, but Bruce, I already lived through thinking you were dead. At this stage, life is really the only thing I want from you. If your life could include me, that would – that would,” he swallowed again, leaning into Bruce’s side. “I would very much like to be a part of it.”

“ _Dick_ ,” Bruce said, hand on his shoulder becoming an arm around him, Bruce’s forehead pressed to his. “You have always been. Without you – it doesn’t – I can’t. That I did that to you… I couldn’t stay away for much longer. Dagatrix was just the match. I just…Maybe I’m tired of giving things up for the Mission. Maybe I want something, someone, for myself. Maybe things only made sense when I was in the cave with recordings of you, filling up all the empty space.”

Dick wrapped both arms around Bruce again, ear pressed to precious, precious heartbeat, and just breathed. He almost couldn’t believe it, but one of his first memories was learning to take that leap. “You like my voice?”

He felt Bruce swallow and Dick smirked. Darkness inside him was slowly, softly being chased away by the heat of Bruce against him, words Dick had dreamt of but never really hoped to hear mending and warming as they travelled through his body. “Do you want to know what _your_ voice does to me? Do you, Batman? Do you know how many nights –”

Bruce almost bit the words out of Dick’s mouth as he hoisted him up against him, hand under Dick’s ass at long last, getting well acquainted with a fervour very flattering to its recipient. Dick groaned, scrabbling closer, legs hooking around Bruce’s waist and _oh_ , his thoughts derailed spectacularly as their hips ground together. Bruce tore his mouth away from where it had been making heady love to Dick’s throat to groan in answer, and _Dick_ was doing this to him, this was really happening, Bruce was kissing him, was aroused by kissing him, he could die right now and be happy, but just a little death – he had much more planned for later.

They lurched drunkenly out of the kitchen, Dick’s legs still tight around Bruce’s waist and one of Bruce’s hands seemingly glued to Dick’s ass – _Do you know how mad you drive me, with your uniform and your acrobatics? Do you?_ growled into his ear in a tone that reached into the most primal parts of Dick’s brain and flipped a switch – but got no further than the doorway into the hall before Dick wrenched Bruce’s jacket off all but one arm, biting kisses with joyful abandon into Bruce’s neck and along his delicious jaw.

Bruce’s breath seized and he rucked Dick’s shirt up even further to dig his fingers into his flank as Dick laved his way from the hollow under Bruce’s ear down to his pulse, where he bit gently and licked to soothe. “Oh god, Bruce, you have no idea how much I…”

“Oh, don’t I?” Bruce rasped, finally pulling his hand away from its worshipful attentions only to shake off the jacket and then shift his hand north to Dick’s lower back to grind their erections together. Dick moaned at the sensation, fireworks going off behind his eyes as he dropped his head to Bruce’s shoulder and panted, rocking his hips into Bruce’s.

“Come on, B – no, not literally, ah, god, I mean, hurry up, bed with trousers off,” he groaned, sweeping his hands all over the muscled wall of Bruce’s back, still unreachable under his shirt even though he’d vaguely heard some buttons go pinging off into the hall.

Bruce grunted as he jolted Dick up against him again and stepped away from the wall, striding down to Dick’s bedroom with gratifying haste. Dick thanked him by sucking teasingly on his tongue and letting Bruce kiss and bite his lips in return. He felt Bruce’s muscles bunch beneath him and loosened his grip on Bruce’s hair accordingly, but then Bruce threw him bodily onto his mattress and followed him down, and all the blood left rushed south so fast it left him lightheaded.

“Oh god,” he keened, wrapping all available limbs around Bruce and tucking his head into Bruce’s neck so he could have a moment of darkness to control himself. Bruce chuckled darkly, working Dick’s shirt up and running his hands through Dick’s hair as he pulled it off, tightening a fist – carefully, still, even now – and using the tingling grip to guide Dick’s face up for another all-consuming kiss.

Dick lost time for a moment, the heat and desire and such long abandoned desperate hopes surging up to obliterate everything but Bruce’s lips against his, and when he had to pull his head back to breathe he realised Bruce’s shirt was gone and both their trousers were undone. Still drifting on that bliss, it took Dick a moment to realise the whimper that had stopped Bruce was his own, and that he was clinging to Bruce too tightly for him to get their pants off.

“Shh, Dick, easy,” Bruce whispered hoarsely, stroking a hand over Dick’s cheek and brushing kisses to his eyebrow, cheekbone, nose, lips, anywhere he could reach. “I’m here.”

He was. Bruce was here, with Dick, at last. Slowly, Dick let go and let Bruce slide back far enough to shuck both their trousers and underwear with them.

“I just showered,” he remembered stupidly, and Bruce chuckled again.

“I can afford the hot water bills, if you need,” he said, and Dick narrowed his eyes at him before reaching for the drawer in his bedside table.

“Keep up with the smart-ass answers and you’ll be showering alone tonight.”

“Mmm, who’s the one with the smart ass?” Bruce asked, squeezing it lovingly and bending to bite a cheek. Dick jolted, gasping, and darted a hand to his aching cock for relief but Bruce grabbed his wrist before he could and kissed the little jut of bone instead, rolling Dick back onto his back and sitting up.

To his distant, muffled mortification, Dick keened at the distance again and lurched up to close the gap, hands running over Bruce’s scarred chest, finding the ones he knew – the first one acquired with Robin by his side, the one he knew best, thin silver line parallel to Bruce’s third rib on his left, a souvenir from a nameless street thug that fifth patrol – and acquainting himself with the ones he didn’t.

Bruce kissed along his shoulders, sucking on the few scars criss-crossing his trapezius and biting at his collar bone as his hands wandered along Dick’s hips, and Dick whined when one ventured tantalisingly close to his neglected erection. Bruce smirked and swooped in for a kiss as he closed a hand around Dick’s cock. Dick jolted as lightning flickered up and down his spine, groaning, and got his knees beneath him enough to settle on Bruce’s lap.

“Headboard,” he suggested breathlessly a moment later, when Bruce’s thighs bunched beneath him as he balanced between stroking Dick’s erection and opening the lube behind Dick’s back with one hand.

Bruce grunted and hauled Dick along with him as he spun to sit with his back against the board, kicking the blanket burrito shell down to the end of the bed.

They both groaned as their erections brushed together, Dick settled into the cradle of Bruce’s hips and thighs. “I should have known I’d like being manhandled,” he breathed wryly between them, gripping both their cocks in a tight fist. Bruce’s eyes darkened further and he growled low in his throat as he bit another kiss deep into Dick’s breathless mouth, lubed hand slipping over and back.

“Ah!” Dick arched back at the first finger, hands flying to Bruce’s broad shoulders. “Ah, oh god, Bruce!”

“My name in your mouth,” Bruce gasped, kissing him again and twisting, “should be illegal.”

“I’d break – _oh_ – that rule anyway, B. We’re – we’re, ah, vigilantes, aren’t we? So fuck me, Batman.”

Bruce swore under his breath, hand not occupied latching onto Dick’s hip hard enough he hoped he’d have bruises decorating the crest of bone tomorrow. The other hand introduced a second finger and Dick keened again, curling forward to rest his forehead on Bruce’s clavicle. Oh, oh, oh god, this was everything and more, the heat, the fullness, Bruce’s thick calloused hands, the scent of him, sweat trickling down both of them and rasping, heaving breaths, evidence of how much they wanted this when a fight on the streets barely fazed them.

After the third finger, Dick choked, “Now, Bruce, oh, now now I can’t wait, want you, want you so much, please!”

Bruce groaned and kissed him again, cheeks flushed as he rolled the condom on and reached for the lube once more. “Yes, Dick, yes, I know, and me, you’re so, you’re, breathe, Dick, easy…”

Raising himself up on his knees, Dick threw his head back and panted between gritted teeth as Bruce eased his hips into position and then down, down, down, blazing heat and aching depth, long and hard and perfect, settled deep within Dick where Bruce belonged, held close and safe.

“Dick,” Bruce rasped, “Dick, Dick, god.”

“Bruce,” Dick panted, pressing opened-mouthed kisses wherever he could reach as he rose up and sank down, rocked up and sank down, rolling into a rhythmic counterpoint to each of Bruce’s thrusts, more primal than bloodlust and more perfect than a glittering band of stars across the sky. “Bruce.” It was the only word he knew now, minutes racing past with this heat and ache and stretch and burning delight, the name for the cradle of strength all around him, holding him together as ecstasy shook him apart.

Bruce groaned low and long in his chest, the rumble all-encompassing under Dick’s ear as he slumped forwards, sweat and worse mussed between them as Bruce crushed him close for one last thrust.

Heartbeat a deafening thunder in his ears, Dick could only hold on and breathe. Bruce’s chest beneath him lifted and fell like the bellows in a forge, but even in his haze Dick knew Bruce well enough to feel that the tense steel woven into him hadn’t truly relaxed. “Shh, B,” he murmured muzzily, aware only that Bruce was somehow strung tight and he had to soothe. “Stop it,” as he willed life into his hands and smoothed them up and down Bruce’s arms, “I’m here.”

This time the sigh that shook Bruce was almost a shudder, and Dick tried to bat away the fog in his head enough to sit back and look Bruce in the eye. Somehow it seemed so achingly intimate compared to their earlier activities as he framed Bruce’s face between his palms and kissed him once, soft and lingering.

Bruce finally met his gaze.

“There you are,” Dick said, and smiled.

Bruce closed his eyes, not quite a flinch, and covered one of Dick’s hands with his own. It said more than he ever could and Dick leant forward to press a kiss like a benediction to his forehead.

“I’ll find you,” he promised, “however far you get lost in your head. Promise you’ll pull me out of mine?”

Again, as Bruce tipped his forehead to Dick’s, he didn’t need to speak. For another long minute they sat together, just breathing, until Dick shifted slightly, body coming back online and reminding him he was a little sticky and pleasantly achy.

“Sorry,” Bruce murmured, nudging Dick’s nose with his own. “Ruined the afterglow a little.”

“I’m sure we just need practice – in fact, a lot of practice – to achieve optimum afterglow levels,” he grinned, lolling to the side as Bruce directed and wriggling happily when Bruce returned to bed a moment later with a warm damp towel. “Bruce,” he murmured, stroking the backs of his fingers against Bruce’s wrist as he swished the towel over both of them. “Bruce.”

“Mmm?”

“Nothing,” Dick sighed blissfully, curling up against him when Bruce lay down and shifting his head to Bruce’s shoulder. “I just like the taste of your name.”

“I haven’t yet had a taste of yours,” Bruce murmured wickedly as he stroked a suggestive hand downwards.

“Bruce!” Dick laughed, delighted, and found enough energy to prop himself up on his elbow to grin down at him.

Bruce looked up, still terrified, still hungry, still so achingly dear. He quirked the tiniest, indulgent smile up at Dick, not fully at ease but relaxed enough. Batman might be used to getting things right on the first try, but for this they had plenty of time. “Might have to wait till after breakfast.”

Heart full to overflowing, nearly ready to fly if only he could feel his toes, Dick bent to brush a kiss at the corner of Bruce’s mouth. He was still here, still with Dick, and would be for as long as Dick had breath left to fight for him. “Might have to wait until after lunch. Mmm, burgers, proper food, pizza! Oh, sizzling hot fries and mayonnaise…Let me sleep and feed me, and then we’ll see.”

“So this is how it’s going to be.” Bruce sighed long-sufferingly. “I doubt you have anything edible in the household.”

Dick nipped the shoulder he was lying on. “This is exactly how it’s going to be. And you can spring for delivery.”

“Well, you’re not going to be able to stand, so we’ll have to.”

“Promises, promises,” Dick tutted, and dragged the tip of his tongue up Bruce’s neck.

He woke that night, replete and satiated in more ways than one with messages sent to brothers and bags unpacked, to the soft glow of countless stars orbiting above them. The device on Bruce’s bedside spun the shimmering galaxy slowly across the ceiling, stars familiar and foreign wheeling onwards. He rolled over, sleepily pleased that Bruce liked the gift, but Bruce wasn’t looking up at the stars, bright against the blackness.

He smiled, and tentatively, tenderly, Bruce did too.

 

 


End file.
